


Human...?

by DemiGardess



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Complete, How Do I Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiGardess/pseuds/DemiGardess
Summary: To avoid being executed by the Vatican, Rin runs away and ends up in Tokyo.With his luck, he's attacked, knocked out, and winds up becoming part of the staff at a certain coffee shop.Also on Wattpad and Fanfiction.net.





	1. Tsumaranai

Rin had expected that the Osaka - Kyoto trip would take a while.  
So he’d brought a ridiculous amount of manga.  
He knew enough to try and save the manga for later, so he turned around and started talking to the person across from him.  
What their name was, he wasn’t entirely sure. He was pretty sure that it was Iki Hiyori. That sounded about right.  
He hadn’t made a point to memorise the names of the people in regular school, as he’d spent half the time sleeping and most of the other half in the deputy principal’s office being told off for sleeping.  
Iki was funny, so soon the both of them were laughing quite loudly.  
This lasted until senseii heard them, turned around to locate the noise-makers, and spotted them.  
“For the love of all things good, be quiet, Okumura!”  
The shout caused him to jump and nearly topple out of his seat.  
Sheepishly, he withdrew back to his seat and focused back on his manga volume.  
~oOo~  
Half an hour later, he’d finished the several manga volumes that he’d managed to cram into his backpack.  
Twice.  
He loved the series, but you could only watch characters with big swords smack other characters with swords around for so long before you got bored.  
For lack of anything better to do, he turned to the person behind him, who he had noticed reading two books earlier in the trip, and asked if she would mind doing a trade.  
She was a slight little thing, with brown hair and eyes. He could smell that she hadn’t eaten recently, and vaguely wondered if she was okay.  
Before he knew he, he was trying to read The Black Goat’s Egg.  
So far, it was giving him a headache of epic proportions. What were these insane kanji that looked like a coal tar had been smashed onto the page? How could a goat have an egg? How?Takatsuki Sen was a good writer, but did she have to use such flowery words and confusing metaphors?  
After spending five minutes trying to decipher a string of confusing and very contradictory kanji, the half-demon gave up and handed the book back to the smaller girl.  
Maybe someone should explain what Rin was doing on a school bus travelling from Osaka to Kyoto.  
Officially, this was an educational camp.  
Unofficially, he was doing a runner before he got executed and the school trip had seemed like a good cover.  
Yukio had informed him that no, it was actually a pretty terrible idea but we don’t have any other options.  
The plan went that, once Rin got to Kyoto, he would slip away from the class, get to a rendezvous point, meet up with the Kyoto gang, and accompany them on a three-day “research” trip to Tokyo.  
He’d stay in the city for a while and figure out his next move.  
There was a snap as Rin jolted back into reality.  
Someone was clicking their fingers in front of Rin’s face, trying to wake the half-demon up.  
Blue eyes cleared as Rin returned to the land of the living.  
“What?"  
"Your phone is ringing. It's annoying."  
He picked the 4S up, and checked the caller ID.  
It was Suguro.  
He put the phone to his ear, waited a few seconds, and realised that he needed to swipe answer first.  
He did so, and replaced the phone at his pointed ear.  
The person who had clicked their fingers at him gave the ear a surprised look. Rin had grown his hair out to cover them for that exact reason.  
“Okumura, are you listening to me?” Suguro shouted through the phone.  
Rin jumped. He’d forgotten about the phone.  
“Heeeeeeeeey Bon,” he said cheerfully “Wassup!”  
“How can you be so cheerful when your life is in danger!” Suguro hissed back.  
Rin chose to ignore this statement.  
“I’m on the bus to Kyoto.”  
“How long until you arrive?”  
“About half an hour.”  
“And where are we meeting up?”  
“Have you forgotten already.”  
“No, you idiot, I’m seeing if you forgot.”  
“The station in the kita-ku district.”  
“Right. And what time are you getting there?”  
“Um…nineish?”  
“The train leaves at midnight.”  
“Oh. So eleven thirty?”  
“Get here at ten. So aim to leave at 7:30 and you might make it.”  
“That’s mean!”  
“It’s true.”  
Suguro hung up.  
Rin pulled the phone away from his ear and glared at it.  
He then put it away and promptly fell asleep.  
~oOo~  
Someone was shaking him.  
“Wake up.” They said.  
Rin cracked open a baleful blue eye to glare at the boy shaking him. He briefly entertained the idea of biting him.  
“Wake up,” The boy insisted “Senseii! Okumura won’t get up!”  
That got Rin up.  
Senseii Naiku was famous for his ability to wake up any student, in a very unpleasant way that left the student not wanting to sleep ever again.  
“I’m up, I’m up!” He yelled.  
“That’s what I thought.” Naiku sniffed, turning away and mincing down the bus aisle in a distinctively feminine fashion.  
Blinking to clear his eyes, Rin picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulders, squeaking when the corner of a book squashed his tail. Think of stubbing your toe on the corner of a table multiplied four times.  
The boy who had woken him up gave him a weird look, before rolling his eyes and walking away.  
Following silently, he joined the mosh pit trying to get their bags and may or may not have scared the crap out of one guy by hissing at him when he got between Rin and his bag.  
The green duffel bag finally his, the half-demon joined the line of students waiting to go to the hotel.  
They minced along the streets in slow formation, took at least ten minutes to sort out who was going where with who, and finally entered the hotel.  
Rin got paired with two boys. Godaiin, who Rin had noticed staring at a flock of coal tars more than once, and Yukine, who Rin knew absolutely nothing about.  
“Dibs first shower.” Rin said, scooping up a spare set of clothes and marching into the bathroom. He locked the door, checked it twice, and let his tail out from underneath his shirt.  
He removed his clothes quickly, and turned on the water.  
~oOo~  
Scowling, Rin checked the time again.  
9:47.  
Godaiin and Yukine were still talking, and had been since before eight.  
What were they even talking about? Nothing was that interesting!  
9:48.  
The half-demon was getting very antsy by then, shooting glares at the two other boys, who were stubbornly not getting the message.  
9:49.  
“Would you two shut up?” Rin shouted, burying his head underneath a pillow “Some people need a thing called sleep!”  
“Okumura!” A voice screamed.  
Crap.  
He’d forgotten that they were next door to Senseii Naiku.


	2. Sukijyanai

“Where the hell have you been?!” Suguro yelled when Rin finally turned up at ten thirty “We have been waiting, in the cold, for ages”  
Rin cowered a little.  
“Sorry!” He yelped “My roommates stayed up way later than I thought he would, and they kept talking and talking and I literally had to scream across the room that some people needed sleep, then senseii marched in and I got in trouble!”  
“Idiot!”  
“No one said you had to wait out here!”  
~oOo~  
Even before they made it onto the train, Okumura was being a pain.  
He would not shut up for longer than thirty seconds, kept bouncing around, asking stupid questions, and at some point found a vending machine.  
He proceeded to raid it, and send Shima into a sugar high.  
Shima on a sugar high was even worse than normal Shima by a mile, in that he flirted with everyone in close proximity. At one point, Shima’s attention focused on Suguro, who didn’t hesitate to throw the contents of his whole water bottle at the pink-haired idiot.  
After that, Shima wandered off and started flirting with Okumura, who stared for a few seconds before growling and showing his demonic nature in an impossible leap to the nearest high point, which happened to be another vending machine.  
Suguro watched all this play out in a sort of frozen horror, while Koneko just buried himself in a book.  
Thank god Okumura was a lightweight - he was out for the count before ten forty-five. Still on top of the vending machine.  
At around eleven, Koneko fell asleep with his face on his book. Suguro turned a blind eye when Shima (still sugar-high) drew on the smaller boy’s face with marker.  
Okumura fell off the vending machine with a thump and a crack which gave the two remaining awake people the fright of their lives.  
They scurried over to the machine at high speed, and looked down at the sleeping half-demon.  
“His arm’s broken.” Shima noted, staring at the lump and looking like he was going to be sick.  
Knowing that broken bones were in the same league as bugs to his friend, he bit his lip and was running over how to realign a bone when he noticed it shifting back into place by itself.  
Right. Demonic healing.  
They moved their friend-but-Suguro-wouldn’t-admit-it onto a few seats and stuffed his backpack under his head as a pillow.  
A notice came through that the train was delayed, pushing its arrival time to midnight.  
Suguro swore upon hearing that, before clamping his hand over his mouth and turning to see if Shima had noticed.  
The pinkhead was passed out on the floor and snoring away.  
Groaning, Suguro ran a hand through his bicoloured hair and wondered if vending machines stocked caffeine.  
~oOo~  
Seven hours in a train alone was boring.  
Seven hours in a train with Shima and Konekomaru was somewhat entertaining.  
Seven hours in a train with Rin Okumura was pure torture.  
Put them together at ten minutes past midnight and what’ve you got?   
A lot of sleeping people.  
The other three had stayed awake long enough to catch the SRS transfer train, laugh at the name “Express Sunrise Izumo”, and find a comfortable spot on the sleeper seats.  
Then they all passed out.  
The only sounds were the rustling of turning pages, breathing, wind rushing past the train, and the wheels on the tracks.   
Suguro had been trying to memorise the Revelation chapters in the Bible, so his muttering soon joined the background noises.  
“The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”  
~oOo~  
By the time the sun was coming up, Suguro had memorised the book of Revelation, and so went to review the book of Joshua, which he had messed up a few times. Just little things, but those little things could cost a life.  
He flipped through the book, overshot, flipped back, undershot, and realised that he needed coffee.  
Putting the dog-eared bible down, he fished through his bag until he retrieved the can of awakeness and cracked it open with a hiss.  
Taking a few mouthfuls, he wedged it into the gap between his seat and the next before picking his bible back up and managing to open it to the right place.  
~oOo~  
“So Joshua who was the…damnit. So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, ‘Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.’ And he ordered the-.” Suguro looked up at a weird choking noise.  
Rin was sitting bolt upright, clutching his throat, eyes wide, the pupils slit and the iris vivid blue.  
As Suguro watched, a tear of what looked like blood formed in the corner of his eye, and ran down his face.  
“S***!” he yelled, leaping up as Rin hit the floor and started spasming. His bible tumbled to the floor, knocking over a few other objects on its way down.  
The racket he was making caused both Shima and Koneko to jolt awake.  
“I’m up!” Koneko yelped.  
“Whassagoinon?” Shima asked, voice and eyes thick with sleep.  
“Fatal verse! How do you counteract one of those?”  
“What?” Both shot upright and the sleep cleared from their eyes with the speed of light.  
Suguro pointed at the shaking half-demon. Both looked at him, then back at Suguro.  
“What did you say happened? Shima asked, voice showing barely contained panic.  
“I accidentally read his fatal verse.”  
“He has one of those?”  
“Yes, he does!” Suguro shouted “Now what do we do before the security guys come through and think we poisoned him?”  
“We can’t.” Koneko said “He has to fight it off himself.”“Demons can do that?” Shima and Suguro asked in unison.  
“I think so.” A shaking hand pushed up glasses “Either way, we may kill him if we interfere. We just have to let this play out.”  
None of them liked how that sounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to add a chapter title!  
> Now how do I name the first chapter.


	3. Kowai

“What the hell is this thing?” Koutaro Amon shouted into his radio “It broke my quinque!”

“It’s either the most screwed up kakuja to ever exist, or it’s not a ghoul at all!” Shinohara radioed back over the noise of a gun firing and laughter “Suzuya! What did we…oh, why do I bother.”

“Kid might be a pyscho, but he gets the job done.” Amon pulled back the hammer on his Q-gun (he hated that thing), and unloaded it into the things head.

It just screamed, as it had the past three times he’d done the same thing, and swung a limb at him, which Amon dodged easily.

“Leaning towards the not a ghoul option!” Shinohara yelled.

So was Amon, but there was no way he was going to admit that.

“Do you need backup?”  
Amon surveyed the mess before him.

Shinohara, quinque broken and Q-gun empty, had given up all hope and was shouting at Suzuya to “Fall back! Fall back, damnit!” while Suzuya just laughed and danced around the waving arms of the creature, stabbing several.

Three ghouls (one ukaku, the other two showing no kagune) were just standing there watching the chaos. Amon’s stomach dropped as he took in their masks.

“We have visual on Rabbit, Eyepatch and a smaller ghoul.” He said into his mic “Request backup. No aggressive moves have been made yet.”

“Copy that, dispatching an available unit”

~oOo~

Disposing of the thing that was most definitely not a ghoul took the best of two hours, and Eyepatch had thrown another spanner in the engine by intercepting several blows meant for the investigators.

Amon felt as though he’d been run over by several trucks, and then the questioning started.

Answering in a half-asleep daze, the Q&A seemed to last ten times as long as it should have had. Akira finally turned up to save him, before telling him that he looked like crap and to get out of her sight and “For the love of all things good, get a good nights sleep!”

As he passed the street with tape and blaring sirens, he involuntarily turned his head to stare at the ashy remains of the creature.

Call it a cliche, but Amon had a feeling that he would be seeing more of these things.

~oOo~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was more of a filler than anything. Characters are probably OOC. Sorry.


	4. Nani??

Rin woke up at the crack of dawn to the feeling of all his internal workings being on fire.  
He did the rational thing: yelled and curled in on himself.  
“H……aw…ke! S…gur…!..et ov…r….ere!”  
“Oku…ra!”  
Oh, so his hearing was screwed up too.  
“Don’t…ow can…ear me…ad your fa…al verse….you have…o fight…”Fight? Rin could fight. He used to always get into fight when people hurt ______.  
When they hurt _____.  
When they hurt _____.  
Who did they used to hurt?   
It was someone important, wasn’t it?  
It was someone very important, so why couldn’t he remember??  
“Burning up…losing himself. Oh look, now he’s literally on fire.”  
“Not helping, Shima.”  
“Seriously though, Yukio will kill us if he gets caught again.”  
Yukio.  
He knew that name.  
Did it matter, though?  
Who was this person to him?  
Were they a friend?  
An enemy?  
What did their face look like?  
They had glasses. He could remember that.  
What did the glasses look like?  
…black, and square.  
They sometimes did that terrifying glinting thing that should only happen in anime and made everything a lot more intense.  
Yukio. Yukio was…  
Rins’ brother.  
His little brother.  
Like opening a floodgate, it all poured back in.  
Turquoise eyes. Those stupid guns that hurt like hell if they shot you. Well, logically most guns would hurt, but Rin had only ever been shot by that gun.  
He should hold on for Yukio.  
He would hold on for Yukio.  
He must hold on for the only family he had left.  
~oOo~  
Eye bursting open, Rin shot upright with a gasp, scaring the living daylights out of the three Kyoto boys gathered around him.  
As his breathing slowed down, it occurred to him that he was on fire.  
After a second of wondering why he wasn’t burning, and realising that fire wasn’t supposed to be blue, the last of his memories flooded in and he knew why.  
He was crying.  
His breathing, coming in painful bursts, slowed to a normal rate.  
He extinguished th-his flames, and turned to the other boys in the carriage.  
He asked, in not so many words, what the [censored] had happened.  
“I read your fatal verse.” Suguro said.  
No sugarcoating. That was one of the things Rin liked about the guy.  
“I have one of those?”  
“Apparently, yes.”  
A moment of silence was interrupted only by the constant rumble of the train.  
“Hey, look!” Shima pressed his face to the window “It’s Mount Fuji!”   
“Seriously, Renzo?” Suguro asked, voice muffled by the palm that he had just placed his face in “Okumura almost dies, and you start sightseeing?”“Hey, my therapist told me not to dwell on the bad things in life!”  
“You have a therapist?”  
“I read it online!”  
~oOo~  
Rin and the three Kyoto boys parted ways just outside the Tokyo station.  
In his backpack was a sheet of paper with four phone numbers, a few cafe names, several apartment suggestions and a bible number scribbled on it.  
Suguro had looked at the numbering of the bible verse twice, and started howling with laughter. When Rin demanded that he explain, Suguro lowered his voice and explained that the book of Joshua was the sixth book in the bible, and Rin’s fatal verse had been the sixth verse of the sixth chapter.  
When Rin didn’t get in, Suguro smacked himself in the face and ve-e-ery slowly said that the numbering was six-six-six, and that the devils number was 666.  
There Rin had finally got it, and laughed as well.  
Sitting on a bench, the half-demon compared the names of the hotels that Koneko had written down to google maps.  
Finding the closest one, Rin put the paper back into his bag and tucked his phone into his pocket.  
He wandered through the streets, looking at the towering buildings around him.  
At one point, he was nearly knocked flat by two men running past in white coats, carrying silver briefcases.  
No one stopped to help him up. That was sad.  
He managed to make accommodation arrangements at the front desk of the hotel, dropped his bags in the room he’d been assigned, and left again to go find a good cafe.  
With his luck, something just had to go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just STUCK around the 900 word mark.


	5. Kura Sugimasu

As was his luck, Rin never made it to where he wanted to go, instead ending up bleeding out in an alleyway.  
The half-demon wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up in the alley. He vaguely recalled being lifted into the air, then disorientation and the city lights turning to a blur as the world spun around him, colliding headfirst with something hard and hitting the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him.  
A trickle of something warm and wet had trickled down from his hairline as he tried to stand on shaking legs, before his eyes rolled up and down he went.  
It was moderately embarrassing. He’d survived gunshots and stab wounds, but here he was, out for the count by a bloody wall.  
He could just imagine Shura shouting at him, waving her hands around like she always did when she was really annoyed.  
“A wall?” he could imagine her yelling “Ya wanna go up against Satan, but ya can’t hold yer own against an inanimate object?!”  
Unbeknownst to Rin, a little smile twisted his bloody lips and the ghost of a laugh whispered into the cold air.  
The sound of clicking heels registered in his pointed ears, before consciousness slipped away from him into a bank of swirling mist.  
~oOo~  
“Kimi, why’d you bring me - oh.”  
“Nishio, he’s still alive.”  
~oOo~  
Rin woke up on a soft surface, with a warm blanket spread over him.  
His head felt like someone was banging a mallet against it.  
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhh.” He groaned, pulling his hair. He’d read somewhere that doing that was supposed to help headaches.  
“Oh, you’re awake!”  
Rin cracked open one eye to look at the speaker.  
She had brown hair framing a face that was warm and kind, and a slight smile was turning her lips upwards.“We thought you were done for.” she said.  
“I have a way of forgetting to die.” Rin mumbled.  
“Do you want anything?” she offered “Food? Water? I can have Nishiki pick up some medicine if you need it.”  
“Water would be nice.” Rin said meekly.  
“Okay!” her footsteps tapped away, and Rin closed his eyes against the brightness of the room.  
She’s back in about forty seconds, holding a plain glass half-filled with water.  
It catches the light, distorting and reflecting on the clear liquid within it.  
With Rin’s demon eyesight, so many simple things looked a thousand times more beautiful. Yukio used to have a crystal that he set by the window, and when it caught the light thousands of rainbows scattered across the room.   
Something in Rin’s chest tightened as he remembered that he would most likely never walk that floor again, never trip over that one step that always gave at the worst possible time, never wake up to the shadows of-  
“Do you still want this?” the woman asked, wiggling the glass.  
The water sloshed and sparkled.  
“Yes please.” Rin said, reaching out his hand “Sorry, I spaced out.”  
“I could see that.” the woman said “My name’s Nishino Kimi. What’s yours?”  
“Okumura Rin.”  
A door banged open in the near distance. Nishino’s head went up.  
“That’ll be Nishio.” she said “Call if you need anything.”  
“Okay.” Rin mumbled, burrowing back into the pillow and falling asleep again.  
~oOo~  
“What do you mean, take him to Anteiku?!”  
“You saw how fast he healed!”  
“He’s not a ghoul, that much is obvious. Why don’t we just kick him out?”“Nishio, he may not be a ghoul or a human, but he’s still a kid!”  
“…I’ll never hear the end of this.”  
~oOo~  
“Oi kid, wake up.”  
“Mmmphrgh.”  
“Wake up!”  
“Fuhve mmore minutes, Yukiooo.”  
“Oh for the love of god. Kimi! Do we still have that huge jug?”  
~oOo~  
SPLASH  
“GYAH!”  
Rin bolted upright, dripping icy water and gasping.  
“Finally.”   
Blue eyes whipped across the room to land on a tall man with chestnut brown hair and eyes hidden by glinting glasses.  
Rin instantly thought of Yukio, prayed that his younger brother never got the idea of dumping icy water on him, and barely avoided another angsty space-out.  
“Get up.”  
The door slammed.  
“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine.” Rin muttered, stretching to a chorus of nasty-sounding cracks.  
The door banged open again.  
It was Nishino, holding a bag with a clothing store logo printed on it.  
“I had Kaneki pick you up some clothes.” she said, passing the bag to him.  
“Thanks.” Rin peered into the bag.  
He could see denim, and some coloured cotton.  
“He didn’t manage to get shoes, you’ll just have to bear with slip-ons.” Nishino apologised “Best hurry up, Nishiki isn’t very patient.”  
The door closed again, and Rin speed dressed in jeans and a slightly oversized black shirt with a random logo emblazoned across the front. His tail slipped out from under the loose clothing, and he cringed and rummaged through the bag for a smaller shirt that would hold the limb in place.  
It was aching - it had been bound for days - and Rin swore he heard a crack from it, the type you get when you stretch a stiff spine. His soul died a little at the thought of tucking it in again.  
“GET A MOVE ON!”  
Fists pounded on wood, and Rin leapt to attention, stuffing his tail under the smaller shirt and pulling the oversized one on again.  
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he yelped, pushing the door open and hitting the chestnut-haired man in the face with it “Sorry! I’m so sorry!”  
Nishino burst out laughing.  
“Stop laughing, Kimi.” Nishiki grumbled, inspecting his glasses for cracks “You, wear these.”  
Rin ducked the slip-ons thrown at his face.  
“We’re going to Anteiku.”  
~oOo~  
Rin hadn’t realised how noisy Tokyo was.  
He’d thought that True Cross was loud, with the hundreds of talking students, footsteps, the constant chittering of coal tars and other low-level demons, but Tokyo was a whole new level.  
Sirens blared, cars blasted their horns, an entire squad of cyclists rang their bells all at once, buskers sang on the streets, people talked, people shouted, a few birds screeched, had the sun been so bright three seconds ago, a baby cried, the sun was definitely very bright and oh that did not feel good-  
A surprisingly strong arm caught Rin as he started to falter.  
“Don’t pass out here, it’ll look bad.” Nishiki hissed, practically hauling him upright “I don’t need Yoshimura on my ass right now!”  
Rin stumbled to his feet again, flushing.  
“Sorry.” he mumbled, kicking himself for slurring the last syllable “How much further?”“Next turn.”  
One foot in front of the other, wait for the buzzing to dissipate, next foot forward, dancing lights fading and taking the front seat back.  
Shaking his head to clear the last foggy bits, Rin pulled up just in time to avoid crashing into Nishiki, who had stopped to open a door.  
He was not having a good day balance-wise.  
“Say anything to embarrass me and Kimi will never know what happened to you.” The chestnut-head threatened, glasses catching the light in a way that managed to look threatening.  
Rin wasn’t afraid of the older male. He probably should’ve been, but once you’ve fought your older brothers, ‘scary’ people pale in comparison.  
The bell tinkled as Nishiki pushed open the door.  
“Welcome to An - oh, hello, Nishiki. Who’s this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...why am I posting this...


	6. Namae ha Nandesuka?

The person who had spoken was a waiter, smaller and slighter than Rin. He had dark hair, and one of his eyes was covered by a medical eyepatch.  
“This is some kid that Kimi found and made me bring home.” Nishiki said dismissively, waving a hand over his shoulder and stomping up a set of stairs that Rin hadn’t noticed “Deal with him, take him to the old man or something.”  
A door slammed, and both boys turned to stare at each other.  
“H-hi.” the waiter stammered “I’m Kaneki Ken. But everyone calls me K-Kaneki.”  
“I’m Okumura Rin. Just call me Rin, or I’ll think you’re talking to my brother. Were you the one who picked up clothes?”  
“Yes.”  
“Thanks for that.”  
An awkward silence followed, with the floor and the air just above Rin’s right shoulder suddenly becoming very interesting.  
Rin guessed that Kaneki wasn’t very social.  
“Um…I’ll take you up to Yoshimura.” The eyepatched male said.  
~oOo~  
Rin soon found himself seated on a couch with a cup of coffee clutched in his hands.  
An old man was sitting across from him, eyes closed in a fashion that Rin thought only occurred in manga. How did the guy make coffee if he had his eyes shut? Did he every miss the pot and pour the water over his hand? Did old men like him swear?  
“I understand that Nishio brought you here?”  
Thoughts, meet reality. Reality says hi.  
“Y-yeah. He did.” Rin took a sip of coffee and nearly gagged. He’d never liked the stuff. Before he accidentally took another mouthful, he set the cup down with such precision that you’d think a wrong move would make it detonate.  
“May I ask why he did so?”  
“I actually don’t know.” Rin admitted “It might be something to do with me being attacked on the way here.”  
“Who attacked you?” The old man asked, hands tightening on his cup.  
“I don’t know.” Rin repeated “I was just walking along, then I got thrown into the air, hit a wall, split my head open and got knocked unconscious.”  
“When did this happen?”  
“Um...” Rin did a quick finger count “A day or two ago?”  
“You healed remarkably quickly.”   
Crap, why’d I say that?  
Rin internally smacked himself upside the head.  
“Um, well...”  
“I take it that you are not human?”  
The half-demon experienced an internal shutdown.  
“Yet you are not a ghoul, either.”  
“Whaat?!” Rin spluttered “Do I look like a rotting animal corpse to you? Or did you go blind after having your eyes closed for too damn long?!”  
“What does he mean, not a ghoul?” A voice demanded from just outside the door.  
Rin startled, while the old man sighed.  
“Touka, eavesdropping is bad manners.”  
The door swung open, revealing a teenage girl with purple hair and a scowl. Kaneki hovered behind her, clutching an empty tray, looking equal parts embarrassed and guilty.  
“I tried to stop her.” the dark-haired waiter mumbled, making an escape.  
“Rin, go downstairs for a minute.” the old man said “I need a word with Touka.”  
“Don’t order my around!” Rin snapped “You’re not my master!”  
But still, he upped and left.  
He slipped past Touka, and the door shut just in time for him to hear her begin yelling. Wincing, Rin walked down the stairs and nearly collided with Nishiki.  
“Watch where you’re going.” the older man grumbled, shoving past him and stomping up the stairs. Rin stumbled, tripped down a few steps, bumped into a wall, and barely avoided landing on his face.  
“Ball of sunshine, isn’t he?” a friendly voice chirped.  
Rin looked at the speaker, a boy a sitting at a nearby table, with dyed blond hair and a rather eye-scorching clothing ensemble.  
“Yeah.” Rin agreed “Though I did hit him in the face with a door.”  
Brown eyes widened, and the boy burst out laughing.  
“You have got to tell me about that!” he hooted, pounding on the table before whirling and shouting over his shoulder towards the counter “Kaneki! Come over here, you’ve got to hear this!”  
He turned back to Rin with a huge grin.  
“I’m Nagachika Hideyoshi, by the way! You can call me Hide!”  
“Okumura Rin.”  
“Can I call you Rin? Okumura is a mouthful.”  
“Sure.”  
“How old are you? I can never tell how someone old is just by looking at their face.”  
“Sixteen.”  
“I’m nineteen, my birthday’s in June. What month’s your birthday in?”  
“Um,” Rin hit a dead end “I don’t actually know. But my dad always celebrated it in December, on the day he found my brother and I.”  
“Oh. Do you know what happened to your parents? If that’s a touchy subject, you don’t have to answer.”  
“No, it’s fine. My mother died shortly after childbirth, I’d rather not speak about my biological father. Someone gave my dad my brother and I, and he wasn’t told our birthday.”  
“That’s just sad.”  
“Thank you for reminding me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was frustrating to write.  
> Really. Really. Frustrating.


	7. Anteiku

Kaneki Ken could hear an epic shouting match going down upstairs.  
Well, mainly it was Touka shouting, and Yoshimura calmly replying.  
Laughter shattered the air, making Kaneki jump and nearly drop the cup he’d been cleaning.  
Hide was laughing his head off and banging on the table, while the dark-haired boy that Nishiki had brought over watched him bemusedly.  
“It wasn’t even that funny.” he was saying “I thought he was gonna murder me!”  
“Haha! He’s too scared of Kimi to do anything like that!”  
Kaya leaned over to Koma and whispered something. The brown-haired man replied in a murmur, and then sidled over to Kaneki.  
“You know all those weird ‘kakuja’ things that have been turning up lately?” The older ghoul whispered to him. Kaneki nodded in affirmation - he’d served two CCG investigator earlier that day who had been arguing very loudly about that exact subject.  
“That kid smells like one.”  
~oOo~  
Rin could, in fact, hear the whispered conversation going on behind the polished wooden counter that smelled distractingly like vanilla. He had no idea what a kakuja was, so he did something that Yukio and Shura would probably class as very very incredibly stupid.  
“What’s a kakuja?” He asked.  
Nagachika raised an eyebrow, and all three waiters froze.  
“I think it’s something to do with ghouls.” Nagachika said, playing absentmindedly with a plastic fork while his heartbeat sped up a little.  
“The old dude said something about ghouls.” Rin yawned, exposing his fangs “I’ve got zero clue what he’s talking about.”There was a thump as Nagachika banged his head on the table.  
“You came to Tokyo without knowing about ghouls? Dude, do you have a death wish?”  
No, I’ve got a death sentence. Tiny bit different.  
The purple-haired waiter who had eavesdropped marched into the room like a drill sergeant who had just been dealt a bad mission, wheeled right, and marched up to Rin.  
Dayum, she looked mad.  
“The old man wants to employ you here.” she spat out “You have to fight me. If you last two minutes, you’re in.”  
Nagachika looked between Rin and the purple-haired waiter, confusion furrowing his brow.  
“Hang on, you said that you didn’t know anything about ghouls!”  
“Huh? I don’t.” Rin replied.  
“But…what...I’m really confused…” Nagachika groaned “Touka, what’s happening?”  
There was quite the whisper-argument going on behind the counter now.  
‘Touka’ hauled Nagachika to his feet, and dragged him over to the counter.  
Two more voices joined the argument, and Rin rolled his eyes before tuning out and choosing to watch shadows of leaves on the wall.  
Then, because Rin was Rin, he fell asleep.  
~oOo~  
Nagachika Hideyoshi pitied to poor non-human soul that had the misfortune to fall asleep while Touka was mad at them.  
However, judging from the frequent crashes and shouts from the underground training room (or the battle arena, as Hide liked to refer to it as), the blue-eyed boy was holding his own.  
He and Kaneki were sitting just outside the door holding first-aid kits in their laps, should anything get too far out of hand. They also had a fire extinguisher, a sledgehammer, and a quinque net within reach.  
Hide didn’t ask about the sledgehammer.  
He considered trying to start up small talk with Kaneki, but it was kind of hard to converse normally while you could hear random explosions, swear words, and other ugly noises.  
So he started talking anyway.  
“Kaneki, my man.” he said “I’m going to try and break the slight awkward silence by talking about absolutely nothing of importance, sound good?”Kaneki nodded vaguely.   
“Sooooooo, I saw Touka hanging out with this blonde dude earlier today.” Hide began, doing his best to ignore a particularly loud explosion “And they were holding hands and all. Do you think we need to give this person the friend talk?”“Hide, you truly are one in a million.” Kaneki said, shaking his head in disbelief “One of our friends is fighting an unidentified non-human who Koma and Kaya said smells like those weird kakuja things that have been popping up, and you’re talking about her love life?”“Just trying to lighten the mood.” Hide said meekly “Everything just went quiet. Do you think Touka’s okay?”  
As if summoned, the door swung open. Touka stepped out, discussing something with the blue-eyed boy.  
Her uniform was ripped and smoking a little, and his shirt was peppered with holes from her ukaku crystals.  
“Your defence was sloppy.” Touka was explaining “You need to be more prepared to block attacks, instead of charging straight in. And your attacks were all over the place - unpredictable but also unplanned, does that make sense.”  
“Yeah.” the boy said, nodding “Shura told me the same thing multiple times. But I think I lasted two minutes, anyway. Am I hired?”  
~oOo~  
Koutaro Amon woke up at an ungodly hour of the morning to the sound of his phone ringing to a overly happy techno song that he’d never heard before in his life.  
“Damn you, Suzuya.” He grumbled, fumbling the device.  
Why was it that swiping ‘answer’ was always so much harder at 3AM?  
“Kouuuuuuhhhhhtarou Amon speaking.” Amon said, professional facade wrecked by the huge yawn mid-word.  
“Amon!” it was Shinohara, sounding like he hadn’t had any coffee “We need you back at the office ASAP!”  
“Did…you just say that out loud?”“IT’S AN EMERGENCY!”Amon shot upright and rushed to his closet.  
When Shinohara yelled, you ran. Akira would probably kill him for showing up in sweatpants and a Ling Toshite Sigure T-shirt, but he’d deal with her later.  
His car didn’t want to start, because fate was a prat who had no respect for timekeeping.  
“Come on, you piece of crap!” He cursed, jamming the key in the ignition over and over until the sputtering engine finally caught with a roar.  
The automatic door lifted far too slowly, and Amon nearly clipped the roof of his car on it.  
He accelerated through the streets, noisy even at this time of morning. Neon billboards flashed, streetlamps blazed, the lights reaching into the sky to create a haze that blocked out the stars.   
His fingers tapped a staccato beat on the fake leather of the steering wheel as the car wheels slowed and locked at a traffic light.  
The red light glared, like so many other red lights across the city full of people that never slept and never woke.  
Amon shook his head. Three-AM office runs always turned his thoughts into morbid emo poetry.  
The red light dimmed, darkened, and the green light flared up instead.  
The pedal hit the metal, and the unassuming silver car sped through the intersection.  
~oOo~  
The air at the CCG carpark was cold, and Amon breathed out a cloud of mist. He wished that he’d thought to put on a jacket.  
He flashed his ID card at the receptionist, who waved her hand at the RC scanners, looking half asleep and in dire need of coffee.  
The numbers ticked on the lift, each light living and dying for a few seconds, until they finally stopped and the doors slid open.  
“What’s the emergency?” He asked, doing his best to look professional in a band t-shirt.  
Akira stared at his shirt, but opened her mouth and began relaying information.  
“Another unidentified.” she said, throwing a bag at him “Put that on, and get your quinque.”The bag contained standard-issue CCG body armour, the same type that she and Shinohara were already wearing. He clipped the helmet under his chin, and picked up his quinque.  
“Ready.” He said, almost saluting.  
The squad took a CCG van, and Shinohara drove to the site of the unidentified.  
Only to find that someone had gotten there first.  
A woman, with flaming red hair that glowed under the artificial lights of Tokyo. She was holding her own against the unidentified with nothing but a sword.  
“Box it in!” Akira shouted, deploying her quinque.  
“What the hell?” The woman with the sword yelled “Ya can see that? Well then, stop it from escaping and leave this to me!”  
~oOo~  
Across the city, in the 20th ward, a pair of blue eyes snapped wide open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> わたしはばかです。


	8. Ao i Hi

Kirigakure Shura was a lone fighter. With her deadly sword techniques and superb martial arts skills, she rarely needed backup and was seldom given it.  
But, when fighting a mid-level demon in a metropolitan area, she always appreciated a perimeter.  
The mid-level demon didn’t.  
Neither did her head - she’d hit the booze a little too hard and her head was killing her.  
“Just die already!” She complained, leaning her sword against the ground as she took a quick breather.“Miss, are you all-” one of the men in the perimeter started forward, as if to help her.“Butt out, eyebrows.” Shura cut him off, bracing her feet and biting her thumb “Kirigakure sword technique: snake belly form! Snake fang!”  
The translucent white arcs of energy knocked the demon backwards, and it shrieked in pain. Shura’s head swooped, the world around her blurring. That had taken way too much out of her. She was officially never letting Neuhaus pick the pub again.  
Pulling her hair to clear her head, Shura took up her stance again and raised her sword as the demon charged again.  
Only for a burst of familiar blue fire to stop it in its tracks and send it rearing backwards.  
A flaming figure leapt from a nearby rooftop and skidded into a low, predator-like position just in front of the demon.   
Because, despite the near endless lectures from both her and the Four-Eyed Chicken, Okumura Rin just would not listen.  
~oOo~  
Amon was not proud to admit that he startled quite badly when the flaming figure leaped out of nowhere.  
“Stay back!” the woman shouted, throwing out her hand as if to keep them back “He’s on our side!”  
‘He’ was freaking Amon out to no end. Growing up in a church, even one that was run by him, Amon had seen various pictures and read many descriptions of what demons were supposed to look like, and this kid checked almost every box.  
But he was dealing with the Unidentified in a practiced manner, so Amon metalled wrote it down as interfering to our benefit.  
There was a flash of blue light so bright that it seared Amon’s retinas and left him seeing glowing patterns, and the Unidentified let out a cut-off scream.  
Blinking rapidly and falling into a defensive position in case of attack, he waited impatiently for his vision to return. Primary colours blended into blobby shapes.  
Amon became aware of a shouting match, between the redheaded woman and the other male. His hearing was affected as well, so he couldn’t decipher what they were saying.   
Someone bumped into him - Akira, he could tell by the slender fingers that grasped his arm for balance - and they formed a back-to-back position. They’d come up with this manoeuvre after an incident in the 18th ward where all the squad members had been temporarily blinded and deafened, and some of the recovering members had been picked off by B rate ghouls from behind. So find a partner, hope they’re on your side, go back-to-back.  
“Oi, Eyebrows!”  
It was the woman again, snapping her fingers in his face.  
“Can ya see yet?”  
“Yes, ma’am.” Amon said, clearing the last blurriness from his eyes and doing a quick scan of the area.  
There was a large scorch mark where the Unidentified had been, and the male was gone. He returned his gaze to the woman and quickly looked the opposite direction when he discovered that she wasn’t wearing a shirt.  
“‘m Kirigakure Shura, first class investigator for the Knights of the True Cross.” an identification card was waved in Amon’s face, and he barely had time to focus on the writing before it was whipped away.  
“And ya’ll got yerselves a serious demon problem.”  
~oOo~  
Rin woke up to the sound of Touka nearly bashing his door in.  
“I’m awake!” He shouted as the wood started to split “I’m awake! I’m getting up!”  
“You’d better be!” The very scary waitress yelled back, marching away down the hall.  
Groaning, Rin burrowed into his soft blankets and considered going back to sleep.  
He then considered the likelihood of him waking up fully intact or alive, and realised that the chances were rather low.  
Brave the cold, or brave an angry female.  
Rin chose the cold.  
Time to put his speed-dressing skills to the test.  
~oOo~  
“What…happened to that necktie?” Kaneki asked later in the morning.  
“I can tie a tie.” Rin said, trying to sound haughty “But I cannot tie a necktie.”  
Kaneki rolled his visible eye.  
“Here, I’ll do it.” he offered, holding out a pale hand for the necktie.  
Rin unknotted the offending clothing article and passed it to Kaneki.  
With gentle fingers, the older male looped the dark fabric over Rin’s head and lined it up with his collar.  
“Chin up.” The dark-haired waiter said.  
Rin obliged, tilting his head up to look at the ceiling, and ending up zoning out as his demon eyesight took interest in a tiny spider crawling around and spinning a web.  
Poor thing would get squished by Touka if she saw it. If he had the time, Rin would catch it and take it outside.  
“Done.” Kaneki said, stepping backwards. Rin folded down his collar and looked in the nearest reflective surface. Kaneki had done a much better job that Rin could’ve ever managed.  
“Thanks.” Rin mumbled. He had a hard time believing that the quiet, shy boy in front of him was a man-eating being. He also had a hard time believing that Kaneki was nineteen - the waiter was tiny and soft-looking, with a certain air of childish innocence.   
“Stop chitter-chattering.” Nishiki snapped, throwing a washcloth at Rin’s head “If I can’t get away with it, you can’t either!”  
Rin ducked, and the cloth hit a cupboard behind him, rattling the glasses. Touka’s head shot up, and she managed to glare at all three of them at once. All three did a great job of looking preoccupied.  
“Your ass is grass, Okumura.” Nishiki hissed, leaning over the counter to grab a tray.  
“Same to you, snakeface.” Rin hissed back, showing his teeth.  
“Can you not fight when Touka can see you?” Kaneki asked, warily eyeing Rin like he wasn’t sure if the Unidentified Non-Human was actually going to bite or not.   
With another scathing glare, Rin and Nishiki promptly turned their backs and went in opposite directions - Nishiki to the table where the first arrival of the day was seated, and Rin to the kitchen to cook up a hopefully-not-literal storm.  
Kaneki looked both ways, and sighed.  
Just when he thought life wasn’t going to get any weirder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me while watching Blue Exorcist:  
> (Episode was Temptation)  
> I cannot take you seriously, as you look like a gecko.  
> How do you pull off that hairstyle?  
> Shura is AWESOME  
> What is wrong with your voice.  
> Dude, stop screaming.  
> Do not turn your back on statues, or that’ll happen.  
> Hot Potato on a whole new level.  
> STOP BEING EMO.  
> Rin keeps fainting.   
> And now they play the intro?  
> This intro is 90% Rin looking depressed, 8% Yukio shooting the camera and 2% a possessed snowman.  
> What did that wall do to deserve that.  
> Spiders kill people too…  
> You just realised that?  
> That’s why baseballs are evil.  
> Those are pyjamas?   
> I UNDERSTOOD THAT WITHOUT SUBTITLES!  
> That sounded like “Tokyo no guuru”  
> I like this soundtrack far too much.  
> Those are some epic fangs, dude.


	9. Eiga

(It’s been about a month.)  
“Hide, no.” Kaneki nearly wailed.  
“Hide, yes!” Hide replied with a blinding smile, waving the disc in front of his friend “Pleeeease, Kaneki? Horror movie nights are what normal friends-slash-families do!”“But we’re not normal.”   
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase?”  
~oOo~  
“Hey, Rin!”  
Rin looked up from the stove he was currently slaving over, slightly irritated and ready to snap and set the whole kitchen alight if someone asked him to make one more onigiri plate.  
He was wearing casual clothes, with an apron over the top and his hair pinned back. His tail twitched under the fabric, irritated by its constant confinement.  
“What?” He bit out, turning up the burner.  
“We’re having a movie night!” Hide said cheerfully “You comin?”“I live here.”Rin deadpanned “Do you think I have a damn choice?”  
“No, you don’t. You are coming to this movie, and you will get that stick out and enjoy yourself!”  
The living incarnate of sunshine left the kitchen, leaving Rin to realise that he’d just been insulted.  
~oOo~  
“Movie night!” Hide yelled through Touka’s door.  
“BUZZ OFF!” Touka shouted back over the sound of whatever video game she was playing “Yoriko, stop beating me!”  
~oOo~  
There was literally no way that Hide was approaching Nishiki about a movie night.  
Not in a million years, a hurricane, or a zombie apocalypse.  
~oOo~  
Kaneki curled up on a single-seater sofa, looking dubiously at the cover of the disc that Hide had chosen to watch. He held a cup in his left hand, filled with clear liquid that he knew from experience wasn’t really water.   
Touka and Yoriko (one of Touka’s friends from school) took the sofa. Yoriko was peering suspiciously at her cup, while Touka was sipping hers delicately. Hinami sat on the floor, hugging a random pillow to her chest and looking like she was about to fall asleep. Loser was pecking at her ear, occasionally chirping out strings of words that would make a sailor blush.  
Hide put in the disc and the opening screen turned on, accompanied with some creepy-as-hell music that Kaneki would not want to hear late at night.  
The door creaked open, and Rin poked his head into the room, a green plastic toothbrush hanging out of his mouth.  
“Whassha doin?” He asked, mouth full of toothpaste.“Watching a movie!” Hide said cheerfully. The teenager withdrew from the room. Then there was the sound of pounding feet, a door slamming, a tap running, and more feet running.  
Rin threw open the door and sat down on the floor next to Hinami.  
“What genre is the movie?” he asked cheerfully, wrapping his arms around his knees.  
“Horror.”  
“I think I’ll get the fire extinguisher.” “Why does he need a fire extinguisher?” Yoriko asked Hide in a hushed whisper.  
“I don’t know.” the blond whispered back “Touka, why does he need a fire extinguisher.”Touka smiled an evil smile that had everyone leaning away from her.  
“Oh, you’ll see.”  
“Hey Rin.” Hide said, holding out a cup “Here you go.”  
~oOo~  
The twenty-minute mark had barely passed before a really bad jumpscare hit and Rin somehow set himself on fire. Everyone reacted in varying degrees of surprise, with Hide and Yoriko both screaming and almost overturning the furniture, Kaneki scrambling at incredible speeds and falling off the sofa, and Hinami somehow managing to cling to the roof.  
Touka, the only person to retain a mild cool head, grabbed the firefighting implement before hitting the flaming boy over the head with it. The flames dimmed and extinguished.  
“Oooww.” Rin complained, holding his head “Touka, that is not what a fire extinguisher is for!”  
~oOo~  
Rin felt a little bit incredibly wasted the next morning. He stumbled out of his room with a huge amount of effort, still in his pyjamas, tail loose for the first time in days, and bumped into Touka, who looked equally wasted.  
“For some strange reason born from the depths of this headache,” She grumbled “I believe that Hideyoshi Nagachika did not actually give us water. Do you agree with that, Okumura?”  
Rin’s eloquent response was a groan as he tramped past Touka, not seeing the startled look she shot at the furry item swishing behind him.  
“What was in that drink?” She mumbled, scrubbing her hands over her face “I am going to kill Nagachika as soon as I can see straight.”  
“There’s no problem with seeing gay!” Koma yelled down the hall.  
“SHUT UP!” Touka screamed back, the volume making her head pound.  
The older ghoul wisely shut up and let her continue her odyssey to the couch.  
Downstairs, Hide was giggling his head off while Kaneki was beginning to give up on him.  
“You sound like a schoolgirl.” The dark-haired waiter was admonishing “Please, Hide, be quiet.”  
“This is too good!” Hide hooted “Did you see Touka! She looked-”  
“Like she was going to murder you at the first given chance.” someone interrupted from the staircase “And she’s going to have help.”  
Kaneki and Hide turned to face the speaker, and saw a very sleepy Okumura Rin who looked about as furious as they came.  
“I don’t like being drugged against my will.” He bit out through teeth that both boys noticed were extremely sharp “A lot of crap happens, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt! Not again!”  
“Sorry, man.” Hide raised his hands in surrender “I didn’t mean to upset you like that. It was just a joke.”“Just don’t do that ever again.”  
Kaneki bowed his head, feeling slightly ashamed, and starting cleaning an already-clean cup just to give his hands something to do.  
“DUDE!” Hide screeched as Rin began to turn away.  
The cup slid out of Kaneki’s hands, and only some very hasty fumbling caught it before it shattered on the immaculately clean floor.   
“What?” The younger boy asked, blinking blue eyes “Is there a spider or something?”  
“Dude.” Hide repeated, at a lower volume “Did I accidentally drink some of that stuff, or do you have a tail?”Rin stiffened, hand flying to catch the appendage that Kaneki now realised really was a tail.  
“Dude.”   
“You sound like a broken record.” the unidentified non-human huffed “Yes, it’s a tail. Stop making a big deal out of it.”  
With that, he spun and marched up the stairs, the limb swishing behind him in a decidedly annoyed fashion.  
“Dude.”   
“Ya finished yet?” Rin hollered from the top of the stairs.  
“Dude.” Hide said, just for good measure.  
A shoe barely missed his head.“THAT WAS MY SHOE, YOU IDIOT!” A male voice roared from upstairs.  
Of all the times for Nishiki to show up early, it had to be today.  
~oOo~  
“Little brother!”   
Rin thought he was justified in screaming.  
He was half-asleep, moderately defenceless without Kurikara (which was under his bed in its kendo sleeve), and Amaimon had literally appeared out of nowhere, right in his face.  
Touka apparently thought that he was being murdered, kidnapped, or just felt the need to smash something, because she kicked the door down and leaped into the room with kakugan blazing.  
“Who the hell are you?” the purple-haired ghoul yelled, air shimmering the way it did just before she released her ukaku.  
Amaimon tilted his head and widened his eyes, sticking a lollipop in his mouth.  
“Little brother didn’t tell you about me? I’m hurt.”  
“As if I would admit to being related to you.” Rin mumbled, tail curling around his leg as he remembered the Earth King pulling it in their last fight “Please tell me you don’t want to play again.”  
“Of course I want to play!” Amaimon leapt up on Rin’s desk, curtains billowing around him “Samael is always too busy, and everyone else is back home in Ge-“  
Rin struck with a kick to the abdomen, sending the king of Earth tumbling out the window.  
“AND STAY OUT!” He shouted, slamming the window.  
Touka wondered if she was still dreaming, and left the room to lie on the couch and contemplate the meaning of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had some of this tuff typed in notes and whacked it into a semi-usable format.


	10. Mizu

The door to the kitchen swung open as Rin exited, dish towel slung over his shoulder and tail loose. He didn't see the point in keeping it hidden, now that all the staff knew about it; all the customers were gone this late in the day, anyway.  
"Rin!" Hide pounced on him, almost knocking both of them over. "Touka brought a girl home!"  
"What?" Rin asked. "Should we be concerned? I'm pretty sure she's straight."  
"Well, she'll probably eat them if they try anything dodgy," Hide shrugged. "But blackmail."  
Rin smiled and allowed his ears to lengthen, improving his hearing massively.  
"Then let us eavesdrop." He said, laughing internally at the shocked look on the bleached-blonds face.  
~oOo~  
Nishiki walked up the stairs at the end of his shift to find Okumura and Nagichaka lying on their stomachs halfway up, Nagichaka with a can pressed to his ear. String led up the rest of the stairs and continued down the hallway.  
"What the hell are you-"  
"Shh!" Both hissed, waving their hands in a 'quiet down' gesture.  
Nishiki noticed that Okumura's ears had gone really pointy, and were almost to the back of his head.  
"What the hell are you doing?" Nishiki had the grace to lower his voice.  
"Touka took a girl into her room," Hide whispered. "We're making sure that they don't try anything funny."  
Kaneki wandered up the stairs behind Nishiki and nearly tripped.  
"Why on earth are you lying on the-"  
"Shh!"  
"Touka brought a girl home," Rin whispered.  
Next second, Kaneki was also lying on the stairs, straining to listen.  
Nishiki rolled his eyes and continued up the stairs to a chorus of panicked hisses.  
"I'm getting my uniform!" he hissed back, the incarnate of a snake.  
~oOo~  
Nishiki went downstairs to help Kaya in the cafe, while three different species of friends stayed on the stairs to keep an ear on Touka.  
Five minutes in, Rin turned to Kaneki.  
"Hey, are you jealous?"  
"Wh-what?" Kaneki sputtered.  
Hide looked at Kaneki, smiling in a fashion that surely meant trouble.  
"You're always looking at her," the dyed-blond began, "and you blush when she looks at you. I've seen you fixing your hair, and straightening your clothes."  
"Well, she'll kill me if I look messy!"  
"What are you doing?" Touka roared, suddenly appearing out of nowhere at the top of the stairs. She was holding a can attached to a string, with bits of mangled blu-tack stuck around the rim. "May I ask why there was a can stuck to my door?"  
Kaneki slunk backwards down the stairs with a surprising amount of stealth, while Rin pointed at Hide.  
Touka turned her furious gaze to the dyed-blond, while Rin made a hasty escape.  
~oOo~  
"The Knights of the True Cross..." Amon read out, squinting at the card. "And they say they can assist us with these things?"  
"Pretty much." Takizawa shrugged, taking back the card and passing it to Akira.  
The blond scrutinized the card closely, holding it up to the light as if checking for some kind of watermark. Takizawa logged into his computer and started typing away, a stressed line forming between his brows.  
Amon tapped his pen and attempted to set the paperwork in front of him alight by sheer force of will.  
A halogen buzzed overhead, the sound reminiscent of an angry wasp. It was starting to give him a headache, his thoughts drifting in the direction of wherever the headache medicine was, and whether or not it was necessary to call in maintenance.  
"It seems like a legitimate organization," Akira finally said, flicking the card away. "I say we should call them in as soon as possible."  
There was dead silence until Amon realized that he was supposed to confirm the order.  
"Contact the Knights of the True Cross."  
~oOo~  
"Duuuuuude," Hide complained later that night, throwing himself down on Rin's bed with a lot of dramatic arm-flailing, "that was not cool!"  
Rin laughed and put his feet up on his desk.  
"Well, we did know that she would probably kill us. What I want to know is how Kaneki escaped so fast."  
Kaneki, who was sitting on the only actual chair in the room, looked down. "My aunt wasn't the nicest person," He said quietly.  
"Oh... sorry," Rin mumbled, " I didn't mean to bring that up."  
~oOo~  
"I can't believe we have to go back to Tokyo already," Shima groaned, flinging an arm over his eyes and slumping in the train seat. "I think I might be dying."  
"If you were dying, would you be so noisy?" Izumo muttered, eyes reflecting the bluish light of her phone screen. "What I wouldn't do for some quiet around here..."  
Yukio was sitting silently across the aisle from the other Exwires, Shiemi nodding off on his shoulder. Her blonde hair was longer than usual and fell across her eyes. Nee, her tiny greenman, was playing with the blonde locks, squeaking happily.  
Wind whistled past the train, accompanied by the constant whirring of the wheels on the track. The lights flickered through various shades of yellow and white, beginning to give Suguro a headache as he squinted at the words on his book page.  
After misreading the same line three times, he threw the book down in frustration and climbed up on the seat. Balancing precariously on his toes, he proceeded to beat the crap out of the offending light.  
The train took a sharp turn, and Suguro felt his center of gravity shift.  
Next second, he was flat on his back on the floor with Shima laughing at him.  
"Stop laughing," he grumbled. "Have you read the information packet?"  
Shima stopped laughing.  
Sighing, their teacher passed a red plastic folder across the aisle.  
~oOo~  
"You want us to do what?" Touka asked, a look of complete shock on her face. "I have never gone clubbing in my life, Nagachika."  
"What better time to start than now?" Hide offered.  
Touka's purple eyes flicked over the blond's shoulder, locking with Kaneki's guilty silver-grey ones.  
"He talked you into this as well?" she asked.  
"I've...always wanted to go clubbing," Kaneki mumbled.  
A purplish brow raised in disbelief as cogs ticked and whirred in her mind.  
"I'll consider it," she said finally. "I don't even want to think about what Okumura might do to this place if I go."  
~oOo~  
"We rode five hours in a train for a nest of hobgoblins?" Shima wailed, throwing his hands in the air and nearly hitting Yukio with his k'rik."I think I might die!"  
"I'll say it again: dying people aren't so loud!" Izumo snapped, rummaging for her summoning circles.  
"Be careful where you wave that thing," Yukio grumbled, pushing up his glasses so they caught the light in a way that somehow conveyed that he was not in the best of moods. "Positions, everyone!"  
The first of the hobgoblins flew out of the shadows, starting what was going to be a very long night.  
~oOo~  
This nightclub was giving Rin a serious headache.  
The pounding bass was enough to make his eyeballs rattle, not to mention the flashing lights currently frying his retinas.  
Kaneki didn't look much better. The half-ghoul had lost his eyepatch in the first fifteen minutes after it stuck to his face from sweat and tore.  
"Who thought this was a good idea?" Rin shouted to Kaneki, hands clamped over his ears.  
Kaneki pointed at Hide, who was currently laughing his head off at something or other. Touka was slumped over a chair, looking completely wasted despite being unable to consume alcohol.  
"What's wrong with Touka?"  
"Itori--s-n- run-— -he b—!"  
"WHAT?"  
"Itori's running the bar!"  
"Who? Oh, this is Linked Horizon!"  
Kaneki shot out of his chair, eyes wide and one more bloodshot than the other.  
"Hide, no!" the normally quiet boy screamed.  
Rin whipped around at speeds fast enough to nearly give him whiplash.  
A certain dyed blond was standing on a table. Before anyone could do anything, he threw his arms wide and screamed along with the music, "Having the sex with the bees and the eagles!"  
Sinking down into his chair as if it were a pit of shame, Kaneki buried his crimson face in his hands.  
"Someone get him down," The half-ghoul mumbled. "Someone get him down, please."  
Rin was laughing his head off on the floor, he was of no use. That was the kind of friend he was.  
Touka, however, acted.  
In a drunken movement, she lurched upright and opened wild eyes.  
"GET YOUR ASS OFF THAT TABLE BEFORE I WIPE THE FLOOR WITH IT!" She screamed, starting forward.  
~oOo~  
"Well, that was fun," Rin said after they'd been arrested for a mix of public intoxication and starting the brawl of the century.  
"Shut up, Okumura," Touka growled, pressing her fingers into her temples.  
"What I want to know is how you got so drunk," Hide said, leaning back in his plastic chair and leaning forward again when it creaked ominously.  
The female ghoul seemed to fold in on herself.  
"Itori was running the bar."  
A bug buzzed around the bright halogen light, smacking repeatedly into it.  
After a few seconds, Kaneki spoke up.  
"So...is Mr. Yoshimura going to bail us out or do we have to stay in here?"  
"No!" Touka yelled, startling everyone with the volume, "he can't hear about this! He'll fire us! I can't..."  
She broke off into a silence that was suddenly awkward.  
Rin sighed.  
"I'll call my brother."  
~oOo~  
The flickering light of a dodgy streetlamp found several exhausted exorcists slumped against various objects.  
"That. Sucked. So. Much!" Shima groaned, running his fingers through his hair. It was clumped with sweat and dirt. "Point me at the nearest shower and leave me to die under the hot water."  
"Be a quiet dead person!" Izumo screamed, throwing the nearest object at the pink-haired boy.  
She missed and hit Suguro, who roared like an angry lion and had to be restrained by both of his friends.  
Yukio's failed attempts to bring his charges under control went unnoticed by everyone but Shura, who was finding the situation too entertaining to do anything about.  
She'd turned up half an hour after the extermination started- it wasn't her fault, either, the bar was really good- but made up for her late arrival in showing up at all.  
"Help me out here!" Yukio practically pleaded.  
His expression told that he was so over everything, and about to pull out his guns and start shooting people, so Shura decided that it would be in her best interests to shut the exwires up.  
Taking a deep breath, the redheaded exorcist prepared to yell.  
"Shut the hell up, maggots!"  
Said maggots assumed total silence.  
Pushing his glasses up, Yukio stepped forward and began to address the exwires.  
"We're done for tonight. We will now be heading to the headquarters of the Commission of Counter-Ghoul, also known as the CCG for short. We will do a brief mission report, and then move on to our lodging for the-"  
A techno tune rang out, emanating from Yukio's pocket.  
"Our lodgings for the night," he finished, fishing his phone out and squinting at the Caller ID. "Shura, start leading them back. I need to take this."  
His glowed hand swiped the screen.  
Nothing happened.  
With a bit of fumbling, he pulled the glove off with his teeth and swiped right just before the tone finished.  
"Okumura speaking," he said, voice muffled through the glove.  
He brought up the rear of the group, who had started to chat again.  
They all fell silent when their normally calm teacher screamed into the phone.  
"What do you mean you need me to bail you out of jail!?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise I said a guy earlier, and now a girl.  
> Touka's getting around *creepy smile*  
> Nah, I just can't be bothered to go find the error and change it.


	11. Tori

“So what’s happening?” Hide asked when Rin walked back into the room with his phone loose at his side.  
“I got a lecture,” He shrugged “But he’s going to contact someone else who can pull enough strings to get us out.”  
~oOo~  
Out past Osaka, a pink phone was ringing in an alarmingly cheerful tone.  
A gloved hand flipped it open and pressed it to a pointed ear.  
“Who might this be?”  
“It’s Yukio. I need you to bail Rin out of jail.”  
Mephisto Pheles stared into thin air in surprise.  
“Wait, what?”  
~oOo~  
After a dozen calls, two arguments, one bribe, and a few headaches, the officer let the four out of their cell.  
“Don’t do it again.” He said as he slammed the door behind them.  
Lw banks of clouds were shrouding the tips of skyscrapers and reflecting back the multicoloured lights of Tokyo. A fine mist of rain drifted aimlessly around.  
It was absolutely damn freezing.  
“Well,” Rin said, breath rising as an oddly blue cloud “Let’s start walking.”  
“Hide, walk in the middle.” Kaneki said, stepping sideways to make it easier for him to stand there.  
“Why?” the dyed blond asked.  
“Walking through Tokyo in the early hours of the morning is quite a bad idea,” Kaneki pointed out “I don’t want you to get eaten by a ghoul.”“I thought we agreed that you’d get eaten first.”  
“Can we please get going!” Rin snapped, stomping his feet and seriously considering setting himself on fire “It is freezing, and I don’t do well with cold!”  
~oOo~  
Through some miracle or star alignment, no one got caught returning to Anteiku.  
Nothing stirred even when Rin tripped over and bumped into Loser’s birdcage, and the cockatiel screamed like a murder victim.  
No one came to investigate when the cage somehow broke open, the terrified cockatiel jumping into Kaneki’s face, provoking a very manly scream of utter terror and causing Hide to howl with laughter while the Rin tried to pull the bird off Kaneki.  
“The old man must sleep like the dead to not hear this,” Rin said, struggling to pin the bird down without injuring it “Though that’s a good thing, no one likes getting woken up at this time of night. Damnit bird, stay down!”  
“Here, try this.” Kaneki said, throwing a small blanket across the room.  
Rin caught it with his face.  
~oOo~  
For some reason, demons only turned up at 2AM.  
Because Rin was Rin, he went after them with flames blazing, found several other demons, and ended up not getting back until the sun was up.  
Then there were these guys, who kept shooting at him, and didn’t seem to understand that being the same species didn’t necessarily mean that you liked each other.  
That idealism resulted in an argument of rather epic proportions.  
“Have you ever heard of interfering to your benefit?!” Rin screamed, tail lashing furiously “Would you rather I interfered to demonic benefit? Well?”  
“Just stay out of our way!” A man with really funky eyebrows shouted back.  
“Because you were handling it so well.” Rin shot back.  
“Why you little-“  
“Stay out of it, Takizawa!”  
“Mado, are we just going to stand here and let this thing insult the CCG?”“This thing can hear you.”  
“I for one, do not particularly care-“  
“Has anyone ever told you not to insult someone who is holding a weapon?”“Has anyone ever taught you manners?”“What did I just say, Takiza-”  
“Akira, I don’t think you can stop them fighting.”  
“We can’t not try to stop this.”  
“Point, but do we really know what to do about the flaming sword?”  
“Give me five minutes and I’ll figure it out.”  
Mado Akira and Kotarou Amon turned to watch the argument and assess whether or not they needed to radio in backup.  
“I’ll let you know that I passed the CCG’s exams with 99 percent accuracy-“  
“I’ll let you know that numbers don’t do you much good in a one-on-one fight.”  
“What about the number of bruises on your face?”“You talk a lot, but can you back it up?”  
It looked to the two investigators that a fist fight was eminent.   
It also looked like there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.  
“I’m going to call the True Cross team,” Akira said, pulling out her phone from somewhere in her body armour “I’m almost completely sure they’ve stationed one in Tokyo by now. I heard the two highest ranking personnel speaking about a demon with blue flames.”  
“In a good or a bad way?” Amon asked.  
“I can’t remember,” Akira shrugged, dialling a number into the touchscreen “I was in a hurry.”  
Takizawa was still only arguing with the demon, but his words were now coupled with angry hand gestures which the demon was obligingly returning.  
“True Cross? We need your squad here now. We’re near the Waseda-dori and Nakasugi-dori intersection. The one with the yakitori place on the corner….yes, that one. Please be quick. We’re dealing with a demon with blue flames. Hello? Are you still there?”  
Pulling her phone away from her face, Akira tucked it back into her body armour, where it seemingly magically disappeared.  
“The speaker hung up,” She told Amon bluntly “They should be here very promptly, judging by the volume at which they swore.”  
~oOo~  
Akira wasn’t entirely sure what she was expecting to happen when the exorcist team showed up, but it certainly wasn’t the blue-flamed demon screaming like a little girl and disappearing over a nearby rooftop.  
“May I ask what that was about?” The blonde investigator asked the nearest exorcist, the redheaded woman who she had seen somewhere before.  
“Hmm?” The woman turned to give Akira most of her attention “The blue-flamed guy? That was just the Blue Exorcist. We don’t really know what to do with him, he just occasionally pops up, blows stuff up, and then clears out when we turn up.”  
“I understand,” Akira said “Would you mind filling out a form detailing this entity?”  
“Yeah, whatever.”  
~oOo~  
Kaneki was the first to arrive at Antieku that morning, already dressed in his waiters uniform.  
His key was cool to the touch as he turned it in the lock, and a wisp of stale air escaped the hall.  
“Hello? Mr. Yoshimura?” the dark-haired waiter called out as he entered the cafe.  
“LOSER!” the cockatiel screeched, jumping at his face for the second time in 24 hours.  
“Gyah!” the half-ghoul squealed, batting at the small animal “Alright, bird! I don’t care how you got out of that cage, I care that you go back in it!”  
No one came to see the cause of the multiple shrieks that Kaneki produced whenever the bird got too close to his face, so he figured that they were still wasted from last night.  
Downstairs, he heard the bell jingle.  
That was odd, he thought he’d left the sign flipped to “closed”.  
“Don’t try anything, bird.” the half-ghoul warned, backing up with a threatening fingers still aimed at the avian creature.  
He’d just pop downstairs, inform their visitor that they were closed, and then finish dealing with the feathered terror.  
It would barely take a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Famous last words, Kaneki.


	12. Kowareta

Nothing woke you up faster the sound of shattering plates and breaking wood, especially when coupled with screaming.  
Touka’s feet hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs before her brain even processed her throwing back her covers, leaving it free to take the fresh shock of seeing Kaneki being held a few feet off the ground by his throat, slowly being strangled by a huge hand.  
Her surprise meter wasn’t maxed out until she saw her younger brother standing behind the blond man, watching him strangle the tiny waiter with a smug smile.  
“You bastard!” The girl screamed “Let him go!”  
“Let him go?” The blond asked “Sure.”  
He smashed Kaneki into the bar with enough force to crack the wood.  
Touka would be able to take that kind of abuse. Kaneki, soft and kind, would shatter like glass.  
“Let him go!” She shouted again, starting forward with her kakugan flaring, not even considering that she might be outmatched.  
~oOo~The sounds happened in such quick succession that Rin wasn’t sure what woke him up.  
He was out of that room as fast as his demonic speed could carry him, ripping the poor abused door off its hinges and careening down the stairs in a panic, throwing out his arms to stop himself from tripping.  
Heat of the moment made him not care that he was still in pyjamas, with his tail free and some epic bed hair. He hadn’t exactly stopped to look in the mirror on the way out the door.  
Skidding to a halt at the foot of the stairs, he cast his sleep-clouded eyes over the chaos.  
A huge blond man was holding a bloodied Kaneki by the throat while the small half-ghoul clawed at the strangling hands with increasingly weak movements.  
Rin said the first thing that came into his head.  
“What the actual hell is going on in here?”  
A crystal shard flew past his head, ruffling his dark blue-black hair, and embedded itself in the wall just above his shoulder.   
There was someone else in the cafe who Rin hadn’t previously noticed - a teenager with dark purple hair, kakugan blazing, and ukaku wings showing over his shoulders.  
“What the hell?” Rin roared, charging the huge blond only to have something grab his arm. The cafe turned into a blur, and Rin lost all sense of direction as he flew through the air.  
Coming back down to earth with a smash, he found himself at the foot of the stairs again, lying on his back with something sharp piercing his arm. It didn’t feel like the other times he’d been stabbed, maybe it was something to do with kagune crystals?  
Lifting his head, he saw something pale and sticklike stabbed through the pale flesh of his arm.  
Oh.  
That was bone.  
He was pretty sure bone was supposed to stay inside the body.  
He was also pretty sure that what was in your stomach should stay in there, but as his midnight snack escaped he reconsidered that idea.  
“I trust you can handle a half-broken child, Black Rabbit.” The blond casually walked away, Kaneki’s now-limp body slung over his shoulder.  
“Get out of my way.” Rin snarled, showing his teeth as he struggled to his feet. Ignoring the flare of pain that made his stomach heave, he shoved the bone back into place with a sickening snap.  
“You have no idea what I can do to you.”Black Rabbit smiled, tilting his head.  
“I think I can handle it.”  
His first attack was so fast that Rin barely dodged it, and his second sent the half-demon dancing backwards, laughing the slightly psychotic laugh that he’d never been able to make until he became a demon.“Was that it?” The hybrid said, tilting his head and pouting in a way that he knew was insanely creepy “You’re no fun.”  
Snarling, Black Rabbit attacked again, his crystals shattering glasses lined along the wall.  
“Missed me!” Rin sang, spinning around and nailing a hard kick into Black Rabbit’s side, sending him flying into the wall with a curse.  
The ukaku type came right back at him with a roar of fury. Not quite moving in time, a kagune crystal clipped his leg and another his shoulder, provoking a hiss of pain.  
“Not as fast as you think, kid.” The ghoul sneered from his perch atop the bar.  
“Oh, you are so lucky that I don’t have my sword right now.” Rin snarled right back, tail flicking back and forth. He didn’t appreciate being called “kid” by someone who was shorter than him.  
He nearly leaped out of his skin when it brushed something limp and warm, and instinctively pulled it back to wrap around his leg. The rapid movement drew the ukaku type’s gaze to it, and his dark eyes widened.  
“What the f-“  
Rin wasn’t listening, because the thing his tail had just brushed was Touka’s still body, lying bloodied against the wall.  
He blanked.  
It was like what used to happen when he was a kid - he’d get so mad that his mind would sort of overload. When he returned to himself, he’d usually catch himself about to punch someone in the face.  
This time, he found himself strangling the purple-haired ghoul against a table, blue flames roaring around the both of them while someone screamed in the background. Through the haze of fury, he recognised the voice as Touka’s.  
“Rin, stop!” she was screaming “Stop! Don’t kill him!”  
He turned his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye.   
She was leaning against the smashed counter, tears brimming in her eyes and bloodstains on her uniform. Her eyes were flickering red as though she was trying to summon her kagune, but couldn’t.  
“Please,” she begged, seeing Rin looking at her “Don’t kill him.”  
Rin wanted to ask why. He seemed to have lost all form of speech, and the only sound he could produce from his throat was an animalistic growling that scared the crap out of him.  
“Wh-why?” He bit out, hands not loosening around the others throat “H-he let him ta-take Kane-neki.”  
“Please!” Touka cried again “Rin, he’s my brother!”  
Family bombshell.  
Plus as actual bombshell of someone throwing something at the back of his head.  
It wasn’t heavy enough to knock him out, but it bloody hurt and was enough to get him off the choking ghoul.  
Snarling in a mixture of surprise and anger, he spun around and crouched low to the floor in a very predatory position that visibly scared the blond that had just thrown a chair at him.  
“Haha…that was a bad idea,” Hide laughed nervously, backing up at Rin’s literally burning glare “Please don’t kill me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Hey Mum, Tokyo Ghoul is educational.  
> Mum: Get out.  
> Me: Okay.  
> Mum: LEAVE THE LAPTOP


	13. Hayai

“I am so, so sorry,” Rin apologised for what felt like the millionth time “I swear I didn’t mean to attack you.”  
“Dude,” Hide said, removing an ice pack from his bruised eye “I get that you didn’t mean to, and I forgive you for that. But unless you have some weird demon magic that can heal my eye, please go away and figure out how to rescue Kaneki before something worse happens to him.”  
“Okay. Sure. Great idea. Is there anything I can get you?”“A headache tablet. Wait, scratch that. Ten headache tablets, and a coffee with five sugars.”  
~oOo~  
“Um, I was joking. I physically can’t drink that without being sick.”   
~oOo~  
“First things first,” Touka said “We need to pull in all our resources. Aogiri is a huge organisation, and as much as it pains me to say this, we don’t stand a ghost of a damn chance on our own. So does anyone have some strings we can pull.”  
“I can speak to my brothers,” Rin volunteered “Yukio might be able to plant some false information that this group has allied with a demon king and get True Cross to pitch in. I can probably talk Amaimon into being the demon king. If you’re really desperate, I can try talking to Mephisto.”  
“Wait, Mephisto?” Nishiki leaned forward, suddenly looking awake “Like Mephistopheles? In’he some sorta demon?”  
There was a smack as Touka’s fist collided with the back of Nishiki’s head.  
“Have you been listening for the past hour?” She screeched as the other ghoul tried to pry his face out of the table.  
“Uh, no.”  
“I swear that I am going to tear your stupid head off as soon as we save Bakaneki.”  
“I’d like to see you try, b****.”  
“By the time I’ve finished with you, you won’t have enough RC cells to regenerate a bruise!”  
“Shut up!” Rin shouted, slamming down his fists on the table.  
The abused wood groaned, splintered, and fell apart with a small crash.  
“I did not mean to do that,” he stated, “But you two are acting like idiots! How the hell do you expect to save Kaneki if you can’t even be in the same room as each other without fighting! I’m leaving to start making calls, and you better get your s*** together by the time I walk back in that door!”  
Said door slammed with enough force to rattle the hinges.  
Touka and Nishiki glared at each other, testing the theory that it was possible to set someone on fire by the sheer force of a glare.  
“I have every intention of destroying you.” Touka promised, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms.“It’ll be a little hard to destroy me if you’re missing a life.” Nishiki shot back.  
“You’ll be crying on the floor before I even release my kagune.”  
“You want to bet on that, b****?”  
“500 yen.”  
“I bet 1000.”  
“1500 that you cry.”  
“2000 that you won’t be able to save your little boyfriend.”  
The silence that followed that comment would allow for a feather drop.  
Touka leapt across the table with the speed only an ukaku ghoul or a teenager who saw their parents coming home before they finished their chores could manage. The door shattered at she threw the other ghoul through it and grabbed him by the throw. She was going to smash his s***ty skull in, then-  
“I said sort out your s***, not beat it out of each other!” Rin shouted, covering the mouthpiece of the battered phone he was using “If you’re going to fight, be quieter! No, not you, you dumbass!”  
Growling in frustration, the half-demon stomped out the nearest intact door.  
Hide appeared at the foot of the stairs, looking like hell had chewed him up and spat him out.  
“I can hear every word that you guys say,” He said, ice pack still pressed to his head “So can you put aside your petty fights and help save my best friend or not?”  
The angry ghouls locked eyes in another bitter staring contest. Fists clenched, kakugan, teeth bared, beginnings of kagune, the whole show.  
Every tick of the clock hanging on the wall sounded ten times louder than usual, and Hide shifted from foot to foot, trying desperately to hold in the sneeze he felt coming on.  
“Fine,” Nishiki finally spat, breaking his eyes away and sweeping his scathing glare over the rest of the room “What the hell do we have to do?”  
“We’ll need a map,” Hide said “Maybe some Aogiri cloaks? I can get the maps, probably, but the cloaks would be up to you.”“I’m in desperate need of a good fight,” Touka stretched her arms like a gymnast warming up “I’ll be happy to get some cloaks.”  
“Then there’s still the diversion.”  
“Okumura can handle that,” Nishiki shrugged “All that kid’s good for is trouble.”  
“I can hear you!”  
~oOo~  
“Why do I have to play undercover?” Hide whined, reaching for a sachet of sugar. Touka slapped his hand away.  
“Because you have a part-time job at the CCG. You’re the only person who can get this information without looking hella suspicious.” she said, moving the container out of reach.  
Hide sneezed loudly, causing Touka to lean backwards so fast that she nearly tipped off her chair.  
“Take your germs and go, disgusting man child!” she yelled, reaching for a spoon and throwing it at him “Get out of here!”  
“Yes ma’am!”  
He was out of that café before she had the chance to reach for anything else.  
~oOo~  
“Gutentag!”“Holy s***!” Nishiki screamed, whipping around so fast that something cracked in his neck “Ow! Ow, damnit!”  
“Aren’t you a loud one?” A cheerful voice came from somewhere near the ceiling.  
Nishiki suddenly became a professional ballerina, twirling around at high speed with his feet nowhere near the floor.  
Sitting atop one of the fridges was a man who looked like he’d ran away from a circus.  
“Who the hell are you?” Nishiki screeched, voice still a few octaves higher than normal.  
“Lower your voice, parakeet,” The man chided “Mein name ist Mephisto Pheles.”  
“What. I don’t speak English, idiot.”  
The man just gave him an unimpressed look and disappeared in a puff of pink sparkly smoke.  
What the hell had been in his coffee?  
~oOo~  
Rin knew Mephisto must’ve arrived when he heard Touka scream.  
“What the hell?” She screamed, and something smashed “How did you get in here? Who are you!”  
Something else smashed, and Rin hurried out of the room before she broke anything too important.  
Mephisto was sitting atop a chair, on the back of it because he was too weird to sit on the actual seat of the chair.  
“Gutentag, brother!” Mephisto said in his annoyingly sing-song tone.  
“Mephisto,” Rin greeted dully “Get off the chair.”  
“Ah-ah-ah, manners, Okumura.”  
“Get off the chair, please.”   
“Why certainly!”  
Rin wondered why he had thought asking Mephisto for help would be a good idea.  
Oh right, he’d thought it was a terrible idea, but he’d reasoned that it gave Kaneki a higher chance of survival.  
“So, dear brother, what caused you to call upon my services.”  
“I need your help.”  
“Yes, that was evident.”  
“I need you help to break into a heavily fortified ghoul encampment and save my friend, who may or may not be being tortured at this current moment.”  
Ten minutes of rehearsal well used.  
“Do tell me you have a plan.”  
“Well…sort of.”  
“Better than nothing. Let’s hear it.”  
~oOo~  
“That is hands down the worst idea I’ve heard in centuries. You have holes in your defence a mile wide, and this ‘plan’ of yours sounds more like the first draft of a manga volume. Unless the several ghouls you have amounted are all SSS rate, you are most certainly going to die.”  
“We’re not the only ones attacking the place,” Touka revealed, swilling dark brown liquid around in her cup “The CCG will be attacking too.”  
“That, my most useless brother, is a good plan.”  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rin grumbled “Hide’s still gotta convince them, though.”“Oh, he’s convinced them,” Hide said with a smug smile, strutting through the door like a peacock in heat “You’re welcome. We ‘re going to attack in two weeks, sometime after nightfall.”  
“Right,” Mephisto stood up and stretched “Seems that I am no longer required here. Eins, zwei, drei!”  
With a poof of sweet-smelling smoke that made Touka sneeze, the demon king disappeared.  
Hide stared with unbelieving brown eyes at the spot where he’d disappeared.“Who was that?”  
“My brother,” Rin said with a grimace “Well, one of them.”  
“I don’t want to know.” Nishiki declared.  
“No one asked you, Nis***ki.”  
~oOo~  
Hide arrived back at the CCG after his “lunch break”, and was nearly run over by a squad of junior investigators.  
It looked like someone had taken chaos, added a bit of panic, and thrown it into a blender at high speed.  
Everyone was sprinting around and screaming orders at each other, people were colliding, and someone was standing on the receptionists desk for no reason in the world that Hide could see.  
“What’s happening?” A junior investigator asked Hide, hand nervously clutched on his quinque case.  
“I don’t know, man,” Hide shrugged and raised his hands “I just got here.”  
“You! Junior investigator, get to your squad!”   
“What’s happening?” the junior investigator screamed back.  
“Your squad leader will fill you in! Hey Blondey, who’re you?”“I’m part of the delivery squad.”  
“Then get delivering!” The older man snapped, throwing a satchel at Hide, who barely caught it “One envelope to every squad!”  
“What’s happening?” Hide demanded, slinging the strap over his shoulder.“Attack on an Aogiri base, don’t you know anything?”   
“No, I just got here off my lunch break.” Hide retorted.  
“Make up for lost time. Run.”  
Hide ran, suddenly very glad for the exercise that he’d been putting in at one of the local gyms.  
Halfway up the stairs, he smacked headfirst into another person. The satchel strap managed to tear, and the bag fell to the floor.  
Thankfully, the envelopes didn’t fall out, so he scooped up the bag and looked up to apologise to find a blue file being pressed into his hand.  
“Give this to Rin,” The person whispered in his ear, as his hands closed around the cool plastic “Keep the idiot safe. We attack Aogiri tonight, not next week.”  
The woman turned away and ran back up the stairs, red and yellow hair swishing behind her.  
As soon as she was out of sight, Hide bundled the folder into satchel, prepared to do something he’d been forbidden to do since day one, and slid down the banisters.  
He was a little worried that he might’ve been spotted before he made it to the door, but in the scattered groups of running investigators he didn’t stand out all that much.  
On the crowded streets of Tokyo was something totally different. He usually had trouble manoeuvring his bike through the crowds of people, but at high speed it was far worse.   
“Move, move!” He shouted, standing up on the pedals to get a view.  
A few streets away, he ditched his bike (he loved the thing) and ran on foot, muttering a constant stream of apologies as he shoved people out of his way.   
His lungs were bursting and his throat was burning with cold by the time he crashed into the door at Anteiku and nearly knocked it off it’s hinges.  
“Emer. Gency.” He panted, hands on his knees as he struggled to breathe “Need. To talk. To the. Manager.”  
One of the male staff appeared in front of him, and guided him up the stairs. He guessed it was Koma - the hands were too gentle to be Nishiki and to big to be Rin.  
“Put your hands behind your head and stand up straight,” Koma instructed “It’ll help get the air into your lungs.”  
“Thanks.” Hide gasped, doing so.  
“The manager will see you now.”  
Not bothering with manners, Hide burst into the room and slammed the satchel down on the table.  
“The CCG is attacking tonight,” he said “I’m supposed to give this to Rin, where is he?”  
“In the kitchen, as always.” the silver-haired manager replied.  
“Right. You might want to photocopy some of those letters, it’ll be suspicious if I don’t deliver half of them.”  
With that, he dug the blue file out of his bag and bolted down the stairs into the kitchen.  
Rin was messing with something on the stove, hair pinned back and a flour-dusted apron tied over his pyjamas (he must’ve slept in again).  
“Hey, Hide!” he said cheerfully, waving “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”  
“Some redhead gave this to me and told me to give it to you.”  
The dark-haired teen frowned, and poked at whatever was in the pot he was stirring.  
“Yellow tips? Skimpy clothing?”  
“Yeah, I think so.”  
“Give me that.”  
“Dude, turn off the stove!”  
He didn’t, and left Hide to squeeze around him and twist the knob to ‘off’ before anything caught fire.  
“Oh, no no no no noooo.” Rin quietly groaned, staring in horror at the paper.   
His tail lashed left, and nearly tripped Hide over. It lashed right, and the dyed blond really did fall over onto the cold tiles.  
“Dude,” he groaned from his spot on the floor, listening to the younger male run out of the kitchen and slam the door “This will take at least ten minutes to forgive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was HELL to get out. I kept hitting roadblocks.  
> Also, most of it was written pretty late at night. Had to stick around for three hours at a school function to play ten bars worth of semibreves. The cellist missed the opening notes, so I had to play really loud to cover the lack of a note. I was so scared that my bow would bite and make a screech that the violins couldn't cover up.


	14. Tasukete

Anteiku was quiet, as it always was at 9PM at night.  
The sign was flipped to ‘closed’, the tables cleaned, and no food on display.  
A single person was in the cafe, dark blue hair fading into the shadows and brow furrowed in an uncharacteristic mix of worry and concentration. His hair was pinned back, exposing pointed ears.  
His computer was open, bathing a small area in bluish light. A little red light was moving on a map, closer and closer to the place where he was seated. A bare foot tapped nervously on the floor, and the table creaked under the stress that was being applied to it through a pair of clenching hands.  
Abruptly, Rin stood. The chair toppled with a clatter and bounced a few times.  
“I can’t do it,” He said to an empty room, “I can’t.”  
“Hmm?” A very messy blond head appeared over the back of one of Anteiku’s few booths “Can’t do what?”“I can’t meet the exorcist,” Rin said blankly “I can’t face my brother, or Shura, or any of my friends. I let them down.”  
“Ok,” Hide said, not fully awake or sure what was happening “I’ll meet the exorcists. Go upstairs and write your letter.”  
“My what?”  
Rin wasn’t sure what was happening either.  
“It’s an idea I got from the CCG,” Hide explained “You write a letter to the people you care about in case you die in the raid.”  
“Isn’t that lovely.”  
“Ask Touka for some paper, she knows where it is.”  
Nodding numbly, the half-demon picked his way around the toppled chair and up the wooden stairs that had quickly become familiar. A piece of the railing was splintering, courtesy of Rin hurling a knife at Nishiki’s head. In his defence, it was a camping knife still in its sheath and how was he supposed to know that the ghoul basically had fricken’ motion sensors in the back of his head.  
“Touka?” Rin called as his sock-clad feet hit the upper floor “Do you know where the paper is?”  
Touka was all too happy to hurl the cardboard box across the room at Rin’s head, where it smacked him above the eye and split his skin. An oddly spicy smell rent the air - his blue-tinged blood.  
“Sorry,” the female ghoul said, not sounding very sorry at all “Get out of my room before I throw the chair.”  
The half demon pulled several sheets of paper out of the old shoebox and got out of her room at high speed.  
Down the hall, he crossed paths with Hinami. The younger girl was really taking Kaneki’s disappearance hard, as was shown in her reddened eyes and slumped shoulders. Rin didn’t know how to make her feel better, so he just patted her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting matter. He wanted to see her face lit up in her infectious smile, not shuttered off and stained by tears.  
Biting his lip and splitting it (downside of fangs), he threw himself down on his bed and stared at the blank paper. His lip healed almost instantly (upside to demonic healing).   
The bed had a dark pink cover patterned with sakura blossoms, something Shura and Shima would never let him hear the end of.  
Sighing, Rin flipped onto his front and reached for a pen and the first sheet of paper.   
A few ticks of the small alarm clock next to the bed echoed in the silence.  
The paper was still eye-searingly blank. Rin chewed on the ballpoint pen as he thought about what to write.  
It broke almost immediately under his sharp teeth, giving him a mouthful of blue ink. Reflexively spitting at the horrible taste, he felt a twinge of horror as the liquid stained the paper, sakura pattern and pillows.  
“Crap, crap, crap!” he yelped, scrambling upright and sweeping the clean paper onto his desk. He ripped off the blanket and pillows, then clawed off the white sheets as he discovered that they were also marred by the ink. Feet pattered down the hall and around a corner as he rushed into the laundry, carrying the bedclothes in a hasty bundle above his head and looking slightly like a demented pink mushroom on legs.  
He shoved the fabric into the washing machine, kicked the door shut, and started the load. It took ten seconds to realise that washing machines needed something else, and poured a heap of laundry liquid into the slots.  
About a bucketload of toothpaste managed to get the ink off his teeth - in your face Yukio for telling him that wouldn’t work - and he’d just have to hope that no one realised that he’d borrowed some bedclothes from the hall cupboard.  
That whole adventure done, he flopped onto the now-clean bed and nearly chewed the new pen he’d picked up.  
Growling in frustration, he pulled the item away from his face and stared at it as though it would tell him what to write.  
No luck. He’d tried the same thing during several maths tests, and despite it never working he kept trying.  
He flopped back over to his back and stared at the roof, trying to think.   
~oOo~  
Later that night, the window opened and Rin jumped out with an annoyed scowl on his face and Kurikara clenched in his hand.  
The paper wasn’t as blank as before. It now bore a few sentences.  
Hey, Yukio.  
I’m going to be blunt – if you’re reading this, I’m dead.  
Hide had the idea for us to all write these before we went on this rescue mission, in case we didn’t make it back.   
Outside, under the ever present light of Tokyo, a faint shout rang out.  
“Get back here, you little s***!”  
Sounded like the localised demons weren’t making it easy for the son of Satan.  
~oOo~  
“You look like you got hit by a truck,” Nishiki stated “Where was the rage party?”  
“Why thank you,” Rin snapped “And for your information, there was no rage party. Only two very angry hydra. I didn’t even know the damn things existed until last ni-this morning. So now I’m trying to sleep off that stupid encounter, so shut up!”  
His head dropped onto the table for a grand total of seven seconds before something very heavy crashed onto the table and startled him upright.  
Hide had heaved a huge plastic jerry can onto the table.  
“Exorcist dude said that this would repel demons while we’re gone,” the dyed-blond said “Here, put it around the place. You know how this stuff works.”  
With a quick shove, he pushed the container over to the younger male. Some of the contents spilled, splashing onto the table.  
Rin was out of the chair in less than a second, and skittering backwards until he crashed into the wall.  
“Keep that stuff away from me.” he hissed, eyes lighting with an odd glow.  
“Um, that’s water,” Nishiki pointed out “What had water do to you?”  
“So help me, I am going to murder my brother,” Rin growled “For giving us this useless holy water, when he promised us information about the Aogiri raid!”  
“So what’s this?” Touka held up a USB double-bagged in ziplock and dropping from being in the water. “Holy s***, when did you get in here!” Nishiki gasped.  
“I’ll go get the laptop.” Hide sighed, pushing himself off the chair he’d sat on and angling his body for the stairs.  
“I need coffee.”“Me too.”  
“Me three.”  
“I am not getting up.”  
“No one asked you, Nis***ki!”  
“If you want it get it yourself!”“You want the coffee too, go and get it!”  
“Make Okumura do it!”“Move the holy water and maybe.”  
Both ghouls looked at the water, at Rin, and at each other.“Nah.” They said in unison.  
“Then make your own damn coffee.”  
“What if we move the water closer?”  
“Then there’s even less chance of me making you coffee.”  
“And the gold medal for time wasting goes to you three! Rin, what’s the password for this USB?”“Pass it.” Rin mumbled, holding out his hand for the laptop.  
He flipped it open and typed in a word, then another, then a whole string of words.  
“Got it.”  
Somehow, the dyed blonde made heads and tails out of the endless folders, most of which had titles either in english or blank.  
“The CCG moves into position at 7:30PM,” Hide read, brown eyes squinting at the screen “The first attack team goes in at 7:35.”  
“Wait, was this today?” Nishiki screeched.  
“No, it’s tomorrow,” Hide reassured.  
“We should probably go to sleep now, in that case,” Touka said “The manager is closing Anteiku tomorrow, something about going to the 4th ward.”   
~oOo~  
It was safe to say that no one slept well, lest of all Touka. She’d denied denied denied, but she really liked Kaneki as a little more than a friend. She wanted to hold his hand, play with that glossy black hair, maybe even ki-  
She groaned and buried her crimson face into her pillow. Since when did she act like a lovesick schoolgirl?  
Finally, she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.  
~oOo~  
She slept through the rising sun, through the peaking sun, and woke up as it was beginning to set and someone was poking her with a stick.  
With a growl, she grabbed the stick (it was a broom) and shoved it back at the person holding it.  
A distinctly feminine yelp made her jerk her head around as she realised that she’d just stabbed Hinami with a broom handle.  
“Sorry, imouto,” Touka yawned “What time is it?”  
“Six.”  
“That early?”  
“Six PM.”  
“What!”   
The female ghoul scrambled out of bed, staring in horror at the digital clock innocently blinking digits at her.  
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Touka demanded.  
“We all needed the extra sleep.” Hinami shrugged.  
She started to nod, until she realised what Hinami had said.  
“Wait. We?”  
“I’m coming with you. Don’t bother arguing, I’m not going to go into the thick of the fight. I’ll just stay on the outskirts and help if any of us get injured!”   
Touka didn’t argue. She wouldn’t make Hinami wait alone in the cafe, not knowing if they would all come back. Plus she’d thrown her stupid brother into the tunnel system, and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get back out the Anteiku hatch.  
~oOo~  
Time managed to drag and fly.  
No one spoke, not even when the cook walked in carrying a katana that none of the other staff had ever seen before.  
No one spoke when the manager and the older staff came back.No one spoke to convey what was happening, yet they knew what they had to do.  
They were a group of silent wraiths as they flowed out the door and somehow crammed into two CCG-issue cars. No one asked how those had been acquired.  
They drove across the wards.  
Somehow they slipped into the convoy of CCG vehicles, between two vehicles with an odd cross shape on the side.  
“True Cross.” Rin said.   
Silence fell again.  
When the convoy stopped, they parked near the edges and slipped out into the swelling darkness.  
7:28  
7:29  
The minutes slipped past.  
7:30  
Quiet murmurs could be heard as CCG squads slipped into position.  
7:31  
7:32  
7:33  
7:34  
7:35  
All hell broke loose.  
Ghouls and CCG alike surged forward, running like they had hellhounds after them.  
The first few Aogiri members fell like leaves, while their comrades held for a little longer - sticks in a breeze.  
They got stronger, and stronger, until the first human fell. Then another. Then another.  
It was clear that both sides would sustain heavy losses.  
And so began a long, bloody night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit some more roadblocks.  
> Tried to write on a three-hour bus trip, but iCloud screwed me over and didn't update, so half the chapter didn't show up on my phone.


	15. Shindamono wa, ikikaeranai...

The door banged open, the sound echoing over the checkered floor.   
Kaneki pulled weakly at the chains binding him in place on the chair, not really expecting anything to happen.   
Blue light flickered and pulsed, lighting up the puddles of blood that littered the floor.   
Soft footsteps circled to his right, and the blue light grew stronger.   
"That son of a-" A figure rushed forward.  
Kaneki flinched violently away from this person, with elongated ears, a mouth full of fangs, and blazing cyan eyes with blood red pupils slit like a cats.   
"Kaneki! Kaneki, calm down, I'm not going to hurt you."   
Though flames licked around both him and the other person, neither were burning.    
The skin wasn't burning searing charring, turning black and ashy and peeling away to expose bloody red flesh meat food-  
"Just keep it together for a few more minutes, Bakaneki,” The other person said, gently touching his shoulder "Anteiku's come to save you. Do you recognise me?"  
Swallowing his fear, Kaneki looked at the person again.   
Black hair, blue eyes, sharp teeth, pointed ears, tail...  
"R-Rin?" Kaneki stammered out, voice hoarse from disuse and screaming "What...the actual..."  
"I'm a half-demon,” Rin shrugged "I can change forms by either drawing my sword or a s*** ton of willpower."  
While he spoke, Rin was holding some of the chains that bound Kaneki in a hand that burned with brighter blue fire than the rest of him.   
They were melting. He was going to be free again.   
An Aogiri grunt busted into the room, waving his arms like a windmill in a hurricane. Kaneki startled and nearly knocked Rin over. The grunt threw back their hood as they kicked the door shut.   
“Stop taking so long, s***ty Okumura!" Nishiki Nishio hissed, clearly panicking "We're getting creamed out here!"  
"Give me a minute! Kaneki, can you break these now?"  
Kaneki strained against the chains, using all the strength he had.   
They snapped almost instantly, broken links scattered on the ground and winking in the light of Rin’s fire like little bone fragments  
With a sob, he doubled over, black hair - interrupted by streaks of white - falling across his mismatched eyes.   
A supporting arm went around him, and something was pressed into his hands, something that smelled like leather and metal.   
His mask.   
"The CCG's out there." Rin told him "Can you put it on? Or do you need help?"  
"I-I can do it." Kaneki stuttered out, pulling the strap over his head and zipping up the neck.   
"The instant that door opens, it's all gonna be chaos." Nishiki informed them "We need to run like hell and not stop until we're out of this stinking ward."  
Nodding in confirmation, Rin and Kaneki both stood like runners about to start a race. Rin pulled a radio out of his pocket and pressed a button.   
"Standby, we're about to run." He said into the device.   
"Copy that."  
Kaneki's heart leapt at the familiar voice.  
"Hide's here?" He breathed.   
"Not HERE here. He's a few rooftops over with a bunch of bottle rockets designed to look like ukaku crystals. Dunno what they're supposed to do, but-"  
"We f***ing going or not?" Nishiki snapped "Ready or not, I'm opening this door in three, two, ONE!"  
The door flew open.   
Kaneki ran like hell.   
~oOo~  
They pounded through bloodied corridors, where corpses of both humans and ghouls lay pale and still.   
"Now!" Rin shouted into his radio. There were some distant pops, and the sound of much gunfire.   
Nishiki materialised his kagune to swipe aside a few CCG foot soldiers.  
"Go go go!" He yelled, as the soldiers gave chase.   
Kaneki stumbled, legs weak from days and days of not using them. Rin, fire still flickering around him, slowed to help him get up.   
Nishiki (damn coward) bolted.   
Boots pounded on stone as the CCG soldiers caught up.   
Their visors were down, and the pair were clearly reflected in the plastic.   
Kaneki, the wide grin on his mask not marching the terrified look in his silver eye.   
Rin, baring his fangs at the squad and trying to push Kaneki behind him.   
“DEATH FROM ABOVE!” Touka screamed, jumping from the ceiling with her kagune flared.  
A rain of ukaku crystals thudded into the ground ahead of the CCG squad, sending a few of them reeling back.   
"Quick!" She hissed from behind her rabbit mask, looping her arm through one of Kaneki's and helping pull him up.   
Between their inhuman strength, they had Kaneki off the ground pretty fast. Touka fired a few more crystals at the humans before running alongside her two friends.   
They didn't notice one of the soldiers quickly straightening and taking aim.   
They didn't hear the gun fire.   
Touka heard the bullet whistle through the air.   
"HIT THE DECK!" She bellowed, but it was too late.   
Rin screamed in shock as the bullet pierced his flesh just below his left shoulder blade.     
~oOo~  
They both heard the scream.   
The cloying smell of blood filled the air, wreaking havoc on Kaneki's hunger-crazed mind.   
Rin faltered, stumbled, and pressed a hand to his chest.   
A dark line trickled from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the floor.   
"Son of...a b****." The half-demon gasped as he fell behind "Go! Keep running, and don't even try to come back, damn you!"  
Kaneki was in no shape to argue, but Touka looked back.    
Bloodied, broken, flames sputtering from exhaustion, poised like a predatory animal in that dark corridor already so full of death, fighting until he could no longer breathe or move.   
Fighting for them.   
At that moment Touka swore that she would protect Kaneki with everything she had, for his memory.  
"YOU WANNA GO?" The half-demon screamed, picking up and brandishing a sharp object as the pair limped as fast as they could "WELL YOU'LL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME, SUCKERS!"  
~oOo~  
They made it outside in one piece, and were received by an anxious Kaya and a scared Hinami.   
"Where's Rin?" Hinami asked "Oneesan, where's Rin?"  
Touka couldn't speak.   
She locked eyes with Kaya, who somehow realised what she was thinking.   
"He's fighting to protect us." Kaya said, squeezing Hinami's shoulder.   
"He's dead, isn't he." The child cast her warm brown eyes downwards "You don't have to baby me."  
"He...might not be dead." Touka said "He was wounded pretty bad, but Suguro told me that he's the type to just keep coming back." Footsteps thudded and echoed as Hide ran down the cracked road, breath exhaling in white puffs.   
"We need to scoot." The human puffed "We can't wait for Okumura, I just passed a huge squadron intent on subduing the Blue Exorcist, I think he's on his own for this."  
Kaneki raised his head at this, kakugan wide and nearly glowing in the twilight.   
"W-we can't leave him!" The half-ghoul protested, words muffled by the teeth of his mask "He doesn't deserve to die!"  
He tried to step forward, but tripped and nearly fell, legs weak and shaking. He found his arm looped over Touka's shoulders, and the other over Hide's. To his relief, that weird spray that the little blonde exorcist had cooked up was going its job - Hide didn't even register as food.   
"C'mon, zebra hair." The female ghoul grunted, taking some of his weight.  
"Let's go home." Hide finished, squeezing Kaneki's shoulder comfortingly "Let's go home."  
~oOo~  
He died alone.  
~oOo~  
Some say that a twin will know when the other dies.   
Others say, in not so many words, that that idea is complete and utter bogus.   
Yukio Okumura felt as through he had been punched in the stomach.   
All the air left him, and he doubled, curling his arms protectively around himself, hugging his bedsheets close to him.  
"He's dead." Yukio gasped out, speaking the only words that he could force out of his tightening throat "He's dead."  
The words echoed coldly around the empty dorm, the sound waves reaching no one.  
~oOo~  
The rising sun pooled and flowed across the floor, illuminating four figures.   
Nagachika Hideyoshi, breathing evenly while a worried frown flickered on and off his normally happy face.  
Kaneki Ken, mask pressing into his face in a way that had to be uncomfortable, constantly twitching and making little whining noises of terror.   
Fuegechi Hinami shifted with a sleepy moan, laying her head on the half-ghouls shoulder and using him as a pillow. Her proximity seemed to bring some comfort to him, and some of the tension faded from his arms.   
Kirishima Touka, a hardly awake and clutching a mug of coffee, was only really starting to process that Okumura Rin was dead, and this wasn't some stupid prank that Hide had talked him into participating in.   
"Sitting around crying wont bring anyone back,” She murmured to herself "Guess all I can do is make sure that his sacrifice was for something."  
She shook her head, trying to clear the gathering clouds of exhaustion.  
“Jeez, I sound like a damn parable. Or a pyscho.” she sighed, taking a huge mouthful of coffee and nearly spitting it out when she realised how hot it was.  
The apartment filled with the sounds of her quiet choking. Hide raised his head, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.  
“What are you doing?” He whispered.  
“Dying,” Touka gasped “Shut up, go back to sleep!”  
~oOo~  
It was dark, and it was cold.  
A pair of cyan eyes slowly blinked open, red pupils dilating. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …hotondo no jikan.
> 
>  
> 
> I admittedly got the title from the last volume of Death Note.


	16. Shinda te Kara no Tegami

__

Hey, Yukio. __

 __  
_I’m going to be blunt – if you’re reading this, I’m dead._  
_Hide had the idea for us to all write these before we went on this rescue mission, in case we didn’t make it back. Please never tell Shura of this, or she will drag me back out of hell and beat the crap out of me for being killed by someone that wasn’t her or Satan._  
_It’s a little hard to write this, one for the emotional weight and because someone is throwing Loser at Touka and the screaming is making it really hard to concentrate. Every time I think up something serious, someone screams like a two-year-old and I lose it. I honestly don’t know how they’re acting so normal while Kaneki is in danger._  
_Hinami just came down to see what the all the racket is about, and now she’s shouting about seriousness and animal abuse. I’m going to go sit somewhere else._  
_Okay, I’ve left the room._  
_This is where the deep and meaningful stuff starts. Brace yourself._  
You meant everything to me, Yukio. When Suguro read my fatal verse (did he tell you about that?), you were the lifeline I hung onto. You pulled me through that. Yukio, thank you so much for saving me.  
Now that I think about it, I’ve lost count of the amount of times you’ve saved my ass. Thank you, for all those times.  
You asked about that old photo album a while ago – I’ve got it here, come and get it if you’re reading this. I stuck it under the bed, next to Kurikara. I added a few more pictures in. Keep it.  
I’m going to ramble now, and tell you about how I died.  
I tried to go to this coffee shop called Anteiku, but I got attacked and ended up dying in an alleyway. This woman called Nishino found me, dragged her boyfriend Nishiki into the mess, and helped me heal. Then I actually made it to Anteiku, met the staff, and landed a job! Then things went south.  
There’re 8 9 workers here; Yoshimura, Touka, Hinami, Kaneki, Nishiki, Hide, Kaya and Koma. And Roma. I forgot about her. They’re all ghouls (google it), except for Hide and Kaneki. Hide’s human, and Kaneki’s a one-eyed (half human, half ghoul). Kaneki got kidnapped by some guy called Yamori, who is a part of Aogiri tree, and tortures people. Kaneki’s just about the nicest person I’ve ever met (he’s tied with Shiemi), and we’re going to save him.  
I’d like to think that I went out in a brave way, like taking a bullet or a kagune for someone else. But this is me we’re talking about, so I’ll probably fall down some steps and break my neck.  
Take good care of Kuro. He can’t eat salmon, and if you feed him beef you have to cut it up first. I think he might be allergic to mint, and he can’t eat hot food.  
For the love of all things good, get on with your life. Find a good woman (or man, I dunno), have a kid, get a house, raise a family of your own.  
Don’t you dare beat yourself up over my death, or I will come back from hell to haunt you. I’ve got a feeling that my ghost will stick around for a while. You know I’m stubborn like that.  
Well, if you start hearing random noises in the dead of the night, it’s probably me.  
I never congratulated you on achieving your miesters. I just realised that.  
Well, you did amazing! I TOLD you that you could become a doctor!  
You nearly gave me a heart attack the first time I saw you with your guns, though that might be because you ended up pointing them at me.  
I forgive you for that, by the way. You were an exorcist, I was a demon, yada yada.  
I’m enclosing a picture of all of us at Anteiku. Someone (I think it was Kaya) suggested it. I’ll name everyone, back to front.  
The old man with the perpetually closed eyes is Yoshimura. Koma’s the guy with the pompadour standing next to him, the woman with the black hair’s Kaya, and the woman with reddish hair is Roma. Nishiki is the guy wearing glasses, a green jumper and holding hands with the brown-haired woman in the pink shirt. That’s Nishino.  
In the next row, we have Hide with the dyed blond hair and headphones. Kaneki’s next to him, with the eyepatch and the terrified expression. He doesn’t get out a lot. The little girl holding a cockatiel is Hinami, and the cockatiel is Loser. Touka’s the girl next to her, eyeing off the bird. She’s terrified of it.  
And then there’s me leaning over the counter waving a spoon with flour in my hair. I didn’t notice that until after we’d printed the photo.  
I’ve completely lost the topic here. Oops.  
I sound like a broken windup toy, but I’ll repeat it.  
You meant everything to me. I love you, Yukio.  
As family. Just clearing that up. Gaaaaah this is awkward.  
Back to being serious; I don’t know what will happen to my body.  
If I’m not eaten or lost, I’d like to be cremated. Please put my ashes in some different places. I’d like one of those places to be at the monastery (Could you thank the priests at the monastery for putting up with all my crap? Please?), and another to be on the mantelpiece of wherever you raise a family. Just so I can keep an eye on things.  
If you have children, I don’t mind you telling them that I’m a demon. Just please make it clear that I’m not evil. I don’t want my reputation to taint their view of you.  
You know what other places meant stuff to me. If you like, you can scatter some of my ashes there.  
I’m about to run out of room on this page, I need to write to a few other people, and I think Touka is in a horrible mood and will rip off my head if I ask for more paper.  
So I guess this is goodbye.  
-  
Your brother,  
Rin  
-  
P.S. You really did mean everything to me.  
P.P.S. my dirty magazines are under my bed  
P.P.P.S. That was Hide. He destroyed the moment. I don’t think he understands what the words “personal” and “private” mean, and I do not know how he managed to grab the page off me, and I do not know how he even got into the room without me noticing.  
__  
~oOo~  
The page was blurring, and Okumura Yukio didn’t think it had anything to do with his glasses.  
~oOo~  
_Hi, guys._  
I don’t have a lot of paper, so I’m writing this to all of you.  
Thanks for helping me escape, but if you’re reading this, I made your efforts in vain.  
Basically, I’m dead.  
Thanks for being my friends.  
I’m sorry that I lied to you for so long.  
Suguro, don’t die trying to defeat Satan. I’ll kick you out of hell and make you do round two.  
Konekomaru, I’m sorry that I scared you.  
Shima, thanks for trying to be supportive in your weird, dirty way.  
Shiemi, you were a great friend. I don’t know if you ended up choosing a miester, but whatever it was, I’m sure you can achieve it!  
Izumo, I hope you find whoever you’re looking for. (Does Paku know I’m a demon?)  
I remember that one of the Kyoto guys went nuts about losing your best prayer beads.  
They’re in one of the lockers in the bath in the old dorm. You don’t remember, but there was an incident with a little memory demon called Usamaro. You kept coming to use the baths there, and you turned up covered in goo that was all colours of the rainbow. So yeah, at some point, you left them in there and forgot.  
I hope my disappearance and death didn’t reflect badly on any of you.  
I sent Yukio a photo of where I’ve been this whole time, you can ask for it if you want to see.  
Um…that’s all I really have to say.  
Thanks for everything. You all meant a lot to me.  
-  
Bye.  
-  
P.S. There’s a chance I might be reborn as a demon. I’m not sure if I’ll keep my personality, morals or anything like that. If that does happen, I’ll try and find a way to get a message to you.  
P.P.S. And for the love of all things good, don’t tell Yukio if that does happen. He’ll probably come after me with a shotgun.  
P.P.P.S. Oh, and on no account apologise to that transfer that I punched in the face. He deserved it.  
__  
~oOo~  
“I wondered where those beads went.” Konekomaru murmured.  
Shiemi let out a brief, sharp, sob.  
~oOo~  
_Hello, everyone._  
I don’t know how many of you will survive. I hope that, if you’re reading this, I was the only person to die.  
I’m done being an Unidentified Non-Human (I heard you two calling me that), so I’ll tell you what I am. I’m a demon, and yes we exist.  
Remember the green haired idiot that I tried to throw out the window? That was Amaimon, one of the eight kings of hell and apparently my brother. I don’t like him, dunno if you can tell that. My biological father is Satan, but I’ve never had any contact with him where he hasn’t tried to kill someone I love, and I am most certainly definitely NOT allied with him.  
I guess all I can say is thank you, for giving me a home, a virtual family, and putting up with me in general.  
Protect each other. You’ll need to. __

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve caught up with the manga for Blue Exorcist and this is all I have to say: “WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL YUKIO GET YOUR STUPID HEAD IN THE GAME WHY DID YOU TRY TO KILL -spoiler- THEN JUST WALK OUT WHEN THEY WERE TRYING TO SAVE YOU AND THEN KILL -spoiler- AND GO AND JOIN THE -spoiler- WHAT THE HEEEEEEEELLL???”
> 
>  
> 
> I could not figure out how to make the emphasis stuff work. I just gave up.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't figure out how this site works.  
> Formatting errors will probably be present. Now I have to figure out how to add the next chapter.


End file.
